When you hear the word ‘storytelling’, what do you think of?
Maybe you think of being read stories as a child, curled up in bed. Or maybe you think of news articles reporting on current events. Or maybe you think of making an Instagram Story, giving your connections a brief glimpse into your life, but only for 24 hours.
‘Storytelling’ means a lot of different things to different people, and its meanings become even more varied when the word ‘digital’ is put in front of it.
‘Digital storytelling’ is an increasingly common term in academic, commercial, and popular conversations. But what does it actually mean? What does digital storytelling include, and how is it different from plain ol’ ‘storytelling’?
Digital Storytelling: An Introduction by Dr Leah Henrickson answers these questions by bringing real-world examples of digital stories together with academic theory and historical context.
Digital Storytelling: An Introduction presents a new way of thinking about digital storytelling: a way that shifts from thinking about specific kinds of outputs (like short videos) towards processes of meaning making through narrative applications of digital media. Put differently, the book’s focus is on storytelling over the stories themselves. This is because we are constantly telling stories to make sense of the world and our places in it. Stories, digital or otherwise, are not static – they are constantly in progress.
Digital Storytelling: An Introduction has been written as a textbook for undergraduate and master’s digital storytelling courses, with each chapter corresponding to one week of a ten-week course. However, chapters have been written so that they can also be used in isolation from the rest of the book. Each chapter includes a proposed activity to review key concepts, which can be adapted to suit a wide range of desired learning outcomes via classroom activity or assessment. The key concepts are especially relevant to students of media, communications, sociology, cultural studies, and English.
Digital Storytelling: An Introduction will also be of interest to general readers seeking ways to make sense of the world around them. Storytelling has long been how we have made meaning from chaos, and digital storytelling presents so many exciting new ways to make and communicate such meaning. Digital storytelling is only going to become more prominent in our everyday lives, and Digital Storytelling: An Introduction is a must-read for those who want to harness the power of this prominence.
