Archives for category: Digital storytelling

Storytelling and social media

December 14, 2011 //

Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction sounds like a book I’d put at the top of my reading list. It’s hot off the press, just released by Routledge in November 2011 so I immediately surfed over to Amazon to see if I could buy a copy. Alas, the academic publisher has not embraced the digital world. It’s not available for e-readers, and even with Amazon’s discounting, the hard copy would set me back $111.37 before taxes. I’ll order it via interlibrary loan, but if your book budget is higher than mine, don’t wait.

For anyone as intrigued by storytelling in social media as I, this new work by Ruth Page sounds like a fascinating exploration of the phenomena. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s description on the Routledge Web site:

The online stories are profoundly social in nature, and perform important identity work for their tellers as they interact with their audiences – identities which range from celebrities in Twitter, cancer survivors in the blogosphere to creative writers convening storytelling projects or local histories.

Stories and Social Media brings together the stories told in well-known sites like Facebook and lesser-known community archives, providing a landmark survey and critique of personal storytelling as it is being reworked online at the start of the 21st century.

Reading that sent me in search of more about Ruth Page, and I found her Digital Narratives blog, with its wealth of observations and insight. Page is a lecturer in Birmingham, focusing on digital narrative and the impact of gender on storytelling. Her research has uncovered differences between the way women and men tell their stories through social media and also in the ways celebrities use Twitter.

A review of Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction for Science Daily quotes her:

The study shows an increasing trend for using ‘expressive language’ in Facebook (for example, for emphasis or to project friendliness), which is being led by young women aged between 19 and 25 years. Between 2008 and 2010, for example, the style used by young women was later picked up by other women, especially those over 40 years old, and by teenage boys; but not by men.

The role of young women as leaders of the changes in the styles of storytelling in social media is significant as it is at odds with other statistics that show that they are under-represented as the developers of social media sites and software.

Page also looks at the way celebrities use social media. While many use it only to promote their work, others, such as Jamie Oliver, make a more personal connection with followers. Again from the Science Daily review:

At the time I was looking at Twitter for this book, he was promoting his Food Revolution tour in the US. Many tweets are telling the Followers to join the campaign, watch a programme, try a recipe etc. (more or less selling his products) but all of that is countered by his efforts to engage with the followers by writing back to them, telling snippets of his family life and so on.

I’ve embraced social media. Though I’ve sampled a lot of others, I’ve settled on a handful: WordPress (for blogging), Facebook, and Twitter. I’m a fan and regular user of Scoop.it which makes it easy to share links in a curated form that is like an online newsletter. I know that the choices of what I share through those social media outlets tell my story. They don’t tell everything, of course, but they leave a trail of breadcrumbs that are easy to follow. They reveal a lot about what is important to me and how I see the world.

The turnaround for me was blogging. I avoided it for a long time because it seemed narcissistic. Besides, with the number of blogs exploding daily, I couldn’t see the need for yet one more.

An eight-month trip to Australia changed my mind. Blogging became an easy way to respond to the “tell us what you’re experiencing” requests from friends. I could post to Crossroads and send out a brief e-mail. Friends who really did want to know about our trip could read it. Everyone else could ignore it.

I was hooked. As someone with a passion for storytelling and a definition of it that is broad and inclusive, I came to appreciate the possibilities of telling our stories online in a way that mirrors another quote from Ruth Page in the ScienceDaily review:

“Although there is a lot of talk about how digital technologies will lead to the end of the book, social media shows us that storytelling remains a key way of how we make sense of each other.”

Categories Digital storytelling, Meaning of stories, Personal narratives, The importance of storytelling, Uncategorized

Selling experience

November 5, 2011 //

Marketing is an interesting field. I’m thinking about that a lot these days, in relationship to storytelling, because I’m reading Raf Stevens’s new book, No Story, No Fans (which I’ll review here soon). He writes,

We live in an experience economy. The experience economy is about people looking for thrills and experiences, and companies selling those as if they were an economic product.

That’s what Sharp is selling in this ad for its Touch Wood SH-08C handsets. The video is a three-minute experience that is absolutely captivating. Right up to the end, there is not a hint of what they are selling. It sells an experience you will not soon forget. And not only is it a small story in itself, you will probably be telling the story of the ad to friends.

In case you haven’t yet seen the video, I won’t give away anything except a promise if you watch the video, you will feel as it it was three minutes well spent.

Tags advertising, Marketing stories

Categories Business narrative, Digital storytelling, Organizational storytelling

Changing stories of a changing climate

July 13, 2011 //

For the Inuit of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Labrador, ignoring global warming is not an option. As winters warm and ice melts, their traditional ways are threatened. The Inuit have become one of the canaries in the climate-change coal mine. In the memories of elders are stories of change and loss that can help the rest of the world understand how a shifting climate will affect our spiritual, emotional, mental and physical health.

So in 2009-2010 First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (Health Canada) funded “Changing Climate, Changing Health, Changing Stories”. This was a qualitative research project to examine “the impacts of climate change on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being” (from Ashlee Cunsolo Willox’s project Web site).

Health Canada has understood the power and importance of stories to community well-being for decades. They have been in the forefront of employing narrative evaluation and research to understand social phenomena. So it is not surprising they chose to support this digital storytelling project.

Beyond the immediate focus of looking at the impacts of a changing climate, the project has led to development of a digital storytelling center in Rigolet and the hope this remote community can become a leader in showing how community narratives can preserve the past and help create the future.

Poster overview of the project
Rigolet stories
Storytelling Links Climate Change and Health

Perhaps the saddest reflection of all is this: “The stories we tell of today will one day be the stories of the past.”

Tags climate change, Inuit, storytelling, storytelling and healing, storytelling and health

Categories Digital storytelling, Healing power of stories, Health, Organizational storytelling, The importance of storytelling

It’s A Book

June 1, 2011 //

A few months ago I blogged about my growing interest in acquiring an e-reader (Edging ever closer to an e-reader). What prompted that was watching a couple trailers on Moving Tales. I was so enchanted I was almost ready to run out and buy an iPad, just so I could download the app.

Reason prevailed. So did the stacks of books I keep borrowing from the library. I’m a seven-minute walk from a building jam packed with amazing books, and the only thing it costs me to read them is a bit of shoe leather.

I’ve no doubt there’s an e-reader in my future some day, but not now. I have so many books beside the bed, crowded on shelves, and waiting for me at the library, I’ll never come to the end of them. In the meantime, I read the occasional e-book on my laptop, thanks to PDFs and Kindle software. And I curl up in bed with a good book.

For all you bibliophiles out there, here’s something to make you smile, thanks to Macmillan (who make it available in printed form), Lane Smith (who wrote and illustrated it), and YouTube, where this wonderful little film can be viewed, along with trailers for other Macmillan children’s books. Then head on over to Lane Smith’s blog to read about how the book came to be, a fascinating story.

Tags books, e-readers, Lane Smith

Categories Digital storytelling

Edging ever closer to an e-reader

February 23, 2011 //

I’ve taken a wait-and-see approach to e-readers. Most e-books are just digital versions of the familiar form. Nothing wrong with that, not for this voracious reader. And as prices drop, software becomes more standardized, and libraries expand their borrowable offerings, I edge closer to splitting my reading time between my beloved physical books and their digital counterparts.

But I’m also waiting for e-books to offer a reading experience that’s more than an electronic version of words on a page. Moving Tales is a step in that direction. Tapping into the rich world of classic tales, they are creating e-books they describe as a “digital ‘mash-up’ of methods from the worlds of ebook publishing, graphic novels, film, and interactive media.”

This is what is going to set e-books apart from the bound books we’ve known for centuries, not just the graphical interface of tales like these but the expanded possibilities. When I’m reading a book with footnotes, I’ll touch the number and read the note, instead of flipping to the end of the chapter or back of the book. When I come across an unfamiliar word, I’ll tap on it and find a definition. If a lyre bird appears in the text, I’ll find an image without putting down the book.

I confess I want it all in any e-reader I invest in—the familiarity of the book format I’ve known for years (straight text on a page, in this case a screen) and the endless video, graphic, search, and audio options I see popping up in the iPad App Store. Moving Tales offers the kind of integrated experience that’s softening my resistance. If only iPads weren’t so expensive.

So I’ll wait. In the meantime I can experience a satisfying range of offerings on my computer and in the books by my bedside. And I can watch trailers like this one to see what’s ahead for me.