Digital Storytelling: A Discussion

(Note: I did not read ahead on our course syllabus, and incidentally touched on some of the points of this weeks topic on my last post. Sorry!)

(Another Note: My former life as a children’s librarian and my background as a visual artist/illustrator biases and informs this discussion in ways that are too many to tell.)

I love stories, and history is full of them. For historians, especially public historians, digital storytelling can be a great way to captivate an audience, introduce people to the field, communicate complicated interpretations and just have fun with doing what we love. From what I understand the definition of what counts as “digital storytelling” is overwhelmingly broad, and as of yet, generally undefined. Yet, thinking in terms of how other forms of storytelling are defined I like to think of digital storytelling as storytelling that conforms to the limitations of digital technologies, and particularly to people’s expectations of, say, a website. This is not to say that those limitations cannot be tested. The adaptability of digital technologies may be the most exciting thing about digital storytelling.

Last week I looked at the multimedia film/website Welcome to Pine Point and the blog Small Town Noir. These are still my favorite history related websites though outside of history Dangers of Fracking may take the amount-of-time-spent-staring-at-computer prize. This week I tried to focus on examples that are manageable for a final project. The first tool that I came across was Meograph, which many news organizations use, but can also be used for history, like this brief overview of Women’s Rights in the USA (made by KVWM San Diego). Part of me (the control freak) does not like having to concede to the capabilities of a tool like this, yet it does offer fast and easy ways to create complex histories.

Another example that kept running through my head was the Drunk History series on YouTube. Though Comedy Central has acquired the series, at its inception Drunk History was made for the Internet. I know it is not “History,” and is ripe with troubling interpretations and flat-out inaccuracies, yet the first episode (here), to date, has had over five million views. There might be something that we can learn from the format, in this case an absurd YouTube short, that we would not learn if we let our disciplinary boundaries restrict us.

Naysayers of digital storytelling for the purpose of history would likely say that digital media could easily dumb down content, exclude multiple perspectives, misrepresent history as fact rather than interpretation, and convey too much of a linear progression of historical happenings. Moreover, from the public historian’s standpoint, digital storytelling can strip away the shared authority in which we are proud. On one hand, these things are true. They are also true for articles, books, documentaries, exhibits and pretty much all modes of expression.

From bedtime stories and campfire tales to novels and film people are familiar with a range of storytelling techniques. Scholars writing historic monographs often use the narrative form and storytelling conventions to convey their argument. Moreover, we, the academics, understand that while history is multidimensional and dynamic, an historic monograph is the singular interpretation of its author. So why do we question putting a similar form to the public? People are smart and are capable of recognizing that multiple perspectives exist, even when only one is presented. 

In short, storytelling is an integral mode of communication among people. While digital storytelling has the potential to mask meaning with novelty, forgoing storytelling would deny the very thing that attracts most people to history in the first place.

Proposal for Final Project (preliminary)

Initially, I had a hard time coming up with an idea for a project. The readings and sites from this week inspired me to think about how history and art intersect, an activity that required some inbreeding between my historical interests and background as a visual artist (where I have traditionally relegated storytelling). I feel that this project could serve as an opportunity to try to bridge the gap.

The sites Welcome to Pine Point, Small Town Noir, and the Digital Vaults of the National Archives motivated me to think creatively. Pine Point and Small Town Noir both told poignant and touching stories, feelings that I would like my project to also radiate. The Digital Vaults succeeded in demonstrating the connections and complexities that a single era/event/person entails.

Currently, I am researching the Civic Club of Philadelphia and their efforts to centralize the School District of Philadelphia. Prior to 1905 locally elected ward boards ran Philadelphia schools with their individual neighborhoods, monitored by a loosely constructed and minimally powerful central Board of Education. The Civic Club was one organization among many Progressive Era reform groups. Specifically, I would like to tell the story of one campaign that the Civic Club ran in 1895 to get two women of the club elected to the Ward Board of the Seventh Ward.

I do not have access to much of the primary material to create a digital archive of the event, yet I am collecting materials related to Progressive Reformers of Philadelphia with Omeka that I can link to my final project.

I am imagining creating a series of multimedia images and possibly animations (potentially posted to a blog, as this will not require that I pay for hosting) that could serve as a teaching tool for students. The subject matter will revolve around the Civic Club’s campaign of 1895, but will try to connect the narrative with other event, people and places.  

What is Digital History?

Digital history is a tricky thing to define. My familiarity with the field (is it a field?) is minimal at best. The collaborative, interdisciplinary and experimental aspects of digital history projects sets them apart from traditional work in the humanities. Any definition that focuses on qualifiers may unintentionally undermine the non-traditional aspects of any given project. Lisa Spiro’s “ ‘This Is Why We Fight’: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities” approached this dilemma directly and promoted a set of values that focus on communication and community rather than arguing whether projects are in the club or out. Along similar lines, I prefer a definition of digital history that is as open and inclusive as possible and have settled on this:

Digital history is the practice of using digital tools and technologies with the intentions of contributing to historical scholarship.

(The limited varieties of words that definitions of digital history typically entail lead me to believe that this definition already exists in the ether. My apologies to whomever I have plagiarized.)

Because digital history can encompass a wide variety of projects, an open definition allows a focus on the quality of a project in terms the project’s goals and intentions. Digital archives and databases may primarily be research tools, the choices from which materials get digitized to what tags documents receive involves a level of interpretive decision making. The educational website Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History may not be as design-centered, flashy, and academic as more recent projects, yet it’s content encourages the promotion of historical thinking and insight into what historians do for a school age population.

The Spatial History Project is a section of Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) and uses visualizations and mapping technology to approach research questions that pertain to spatial history. The projects vary in themes, from the community based “Rebooting History” documenting urban change to the expansive information mapping of “Shaping the West.” These projects are a result of collaboration between academic researchers, primarily professors and graduate students, and the staff at the Spatial History Project. The mesmerizing visualizations undoubtedly belong within the literature of the topic they cover, as well as within the more sweeping information field in which they reside on the web.

The open source, interdisciplinary journal Southern Spaces presents history in the form of traditional articles, alongside photo essays, videos footage, and lectures, while promoting more experimental entries, such as the types of spatial histories found at the Spatial History Project. Digital history may or may not develop into its own field in twenty years, yet the practices of its proponents are making an impact on the way people process information and the distribution of scholarship.