Perhaps the bible of the digital storytelling movement, Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community, should be required reading for any storytelling practitioner. After the first section is devoted to the exploration of the scientific connections of story to brain, twenty-first mass-media mythology, and the power of personal storytelling, the second section is a thorough plan for creating digital stories. This is, unquestionably, a how-to manual that draws its methodology from Joe Lambert’s thirty years leading The Story Center, an organization whose focus is providing training and opportunities for people to tell stories through digital media, including podcasting. The book concludes with a crucial summary of ethics, best practices, and case studies. Though the book is not specifically geared toward the traditional communications professional, it contains valuable tools that can be utilized to craft effective campaigns that connect with a desired audience.
Bryan Alexander’s The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives With New Media is written in a highly accessible style; Alexander’s examination of digital storytelling is bookended by historical context: prior practices and learnings in the digital storytelling sphere and a postulation of what is coming next (in the ten years since the book’s publication, his predictions are evidenced as prescient, as demonstrated by his prediction of “live stories” being made possible by continuously developing smart phone technology). His approach to “combinatorial storytelling” (p. xv) is based in both anecdote and research.
A brief article entitled, “The Unfortunate Decline of Blogging Among the Fortune 500: The Downside of Adopting Substitute Innovations”, written by Stephanie Jacobsen and Nora Ganim Barnes, begins with a concise analysis of the key benefits of social media for companies: introduction of new products, connection with customers, and development of brand; followed by an examination of the life cycle of innovations, specifically social media platforms, which typically remain relevant for approximately four years. The researchers make a case that despite their time and labor intensiveness, blogs offer a unique opportunity for thought leadership as well as SEO; corporate blogs also remain under the control of the company so that issues like length, word count, media use, etc. are in the purview of the company and its blogging staff.
In her comprehensive volume, Digital Storytelling, Carolyn Handler Miller not only provides a history of storytelling ranging from the ancient Aristotle to the modern AR, she addresses methodologies both creative and practical in usage. The twenty-chapter book is divided into six major sections: New Technologies, New Creative Opportunities; Creating Story-Rich Projects; Harnessing Digital Storytelling for Pragmatic Goals; Media and Models: Under the Hood; Immersive Media; and Career Considerations. As I move forward in this career path, I will find nuts-and-bolts guidance on creating a digital story project, data that can be instrumental in targeting stories, and extensive opportunities for contextualizing and modernizing the ancient practice of sharing stories.
Kimberly Bryant, MA 