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.