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lundby_paperback_Layout 1 3/10/2016 4:15 PM Page 1

Recent years have seen amateur personal stories, focusing on “me,” flourish on social net-
52

Digital
working sites and in digital storytelling workshops. The resulting digital stories could be

LUNDBY,
EDITOR
called “mediatized stories.” This book deals with these self-representational stories,
aiming to understand the transformations in the age-old practice of storytelling that have
become possible with the new, digital media. Its approach is interdisciplinary, exploring
how the mediation or mediatization processes of digital storytelling can be grasped and
offering a sociological perspective of media studies and a socio-cultural take of the
Storytelling,

Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

educational sciences. Aesthetic and literary perspectives on narration as well as question-
ing from an informatics perspective are also included.

“In this insightful and original volume, international scholars draw on an exciting range of
Mediatized
perspectives to understand the transformative potential of digital media for human
expression and recognition of others.”
Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media
and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
Stories
“Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories defines an important new field in media studies.
Contributions address current discussions concerning media and identity, the democra-
CD
tizing potential of new media, as well as significant debates regarding how we best theo-
Self-representations in New Media
rize ‘media’ and ‘mediatization.’ This is a ‘must-read’ collection for anyone interested in
global perspectives on narrative, new media, and the larger impacts and potentials of dig-
ital technologies on both our individual and collective lives as de facto global citizens.”
Charles Ess, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Drury University

KNUT LUNDBY is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of

Media and Communication at the University of Oslo, Norway. He
holds a Dr.philos. in sociology from the University of Oslo. He was
the founding director of the interdisciplinary research centre Inter-
Media at the University of Oslo, focusing on design, communication,
and learning in digital environments. He is the director of the Medi-
atized Stories project which this book draws upon.

W W W.PETERLANG.COM
PETER LANG

KNUT LUNDBY, EDITOR

lundby_paperback_Layout 1 3/10/2016 4:15 PM Page 1

Recent years have seen amateur personal stories, focusing on “me,” flourish on social net-
52

Digital
working sites and in digital storytelling workshops. The resulting digital stories could be

LUNDBY,
EDITOR
called “mediatized stories.” This book deals with these self-representational stories,
aiming to understand the transformations in the age-old practice of storytelling that have
become possible with the new, digital media. Its approach is interdisciplinary, exploring
how the mediation or mediatization processes of digital storytelling can be grasped and
offering a sociological perspective of media studies and a socio-cultural take of the
Storytelling,

Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

educational sciences. Aesthetic and literary perspectives on narration as well as question-
ing from an informatics perspective are also included.

“In this insightful and original volume, international scholars draw on an exciting range of
Mediatized
perspectives to understand the transformative potential of digital media for human
expression and recognition of others.”
Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media
and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
Stories
“Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories defines an important new field in media studies.
Contributions address current discussions concerning media and identity, the democra-
CD
tizing potential of new media, as well as significant debates regarding how we best theo-
Self-representations in New Media
rize ‘media’ and ‘mediatization.’ This is a ‘must-read’ collection for anyone interested in
global perspectives on narrative, new media, and the larger impacts and potentials of dig-
ital technologies on both our individual and collective lives as de facto global citizens.”
Charles Ess, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Drury University

KNUT LUNDBY is Professor of Media Studies in the Department of

Media and Communication at the University of Oslo, Norway. He
holds a Dr.philos. in sociology from the University of Oslo. He was
the founding director of the interdisciplinary research centre Inter-
Media at the University of Oslo, focusing on design, communication,
and learning in digital environments. He is the director of the Medi-
atized Stories project which this book draws upon.

W W W.PETERLANG.COM
PETER LANG

KNUT LUNDBY, EDITOR

 Digital
Storytelling,
Mediatized
Stories
 Steve Jones
General Editor

Vol. 52

PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
 Digital
Storytelling,
Mediatized
Stories
Self-representations in New Media

Knut Lundby, Editor

PETER LANG
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern
Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Digital storytelling, mediatized stories: self-representations
in new media / edited by Knut Lundby.
p. cm. — (Digital formations; v. 52)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Interactive multimedia. 2. Digital storytelling.
I. Lundby, Knut.
QA76.76.I59D57 006.7—dc22 2008014443
ISBN 978-1-4331-0274-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4331-0273-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4539-1890-6 (e-book)
ISSN 1526-3169

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Author photo by Gunnar Grøndahl

Cover design by Joni Holst

© 2008, 2016 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
 ™
Contents

1. Introduction: Digital storytelling, mediatized stories ............1

knut lundby

PART I CONCEPTS AND APPROACHES

2. Tales of mediation: Narrative and digital media

as cultural tools ...................................................................21
ola erstad and james v. wertsch
3. Digital storytelling, media research and democracy:
Conceptual choices and alternative futures ........................41
nick couldry
4. Boundaries and bridges: Digital storytelling in
education studies and media studies ..................................61
kirsten drotner

Lundby et al.indd v 7/30/08 10:04:43 PM

 vi ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

PART II REPRESENTING ONESELF

5. ‘It’s good for them to know my story’: Cultural

mediation as tension ...........................................................85
nancy thumim
6. Mediatized lives: Autobiography and assumed
authenticity in digital storytelling .....................................105
birgit hertzberg kaare and knut lundby
7. Self-presentation through multimedia: A Bakhtinian
perspective on digital storytelling .....................................123
mark evan nelson and glynda a. hull

PART III STRATEGIES OF DIGITAL NARRATION

8. Digital storytelling as a ‘discursively ordered domain’......145

kelly mcwilliam
9. Identity, aesthetics, and digital narration .........................161
lotte nyboe and kirsten drotner
10. Narrative strategies in a digital age: Authorship
and authority ......................................................................177
larry friedlander

PART IV CHALLENGING AUTHORITIES

11. Problems of expertise and scalability in self-made

media .................................................................................197
john hartley
12. Agency in digital storytelling: Challenging the
educational context ...........................................................213
ola erstad and kenneth silseth
13. Fairytale parenting: Contextual factors influencing
children’s online self-representation .................................233
elisabeth staksrud

Lundby et al.indd vi 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 Contents ™ vii

PART V ON THE EDGE

14. Creative brainwork: Building metaphors of identity

for social science research ................................................253
david gauntlett
15. Does it matter that it is digital? ........................................271
tone bratteteig
16. Shaping the ‘me’ in MySpace: The framing of profiles
on a social network site.....................................................285
david brake

Notes on contributors..............................................................301
Index ........................................................................................307

Lundby et al.indd vii 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

Lundby et al.indd viii 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM
 ™ ONE

Introduction:
Digital storytelling,
mediatized stories

KNUT LUNDBY

This book aims to understand transformations in the age-old practices of sto-

rytelling that have become possible with the new, digital media. The resulting
digital stories could be called ‘mediatized stories’.
Digital Storytelling is proliferating. Amateur personal stories, focusing on
‘me’, flourish on social networking sites on the web and in digital storytell-
ing workshops. This book deals with such self-representational stories in new
media.
The approach is interdisciplinary. How can the mediation or mediatiza-
tion processes of Digital Storytelling be grasped? The book offers an encounter
between a sociological perspective of media studies and a socio-cultural take
of the educational sciences. Aesthetic and literary perspectives on narration as
well as a questioning from an informatics perspective are also included in the
book.

Small-scale stories
There is a variety of digital storytelling forms, for example, those related to
the narrative power of visual effects in film (cf. McClean, 2007) or the creative

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:1 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 2 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

opportunities in interactive entertainment (Miller, 2004). This book, in contrast,

focuses on small-scale Digital Storytelling, or what Kelly McWilliam in her
chapter calls ‘specific digital storytelling,’ denoted in this introduction with the
capital D and capital S. They are small-scale as a media form. The stories focused
on here are usually short, just a few minutes long. Second, they are small-scale
in the sense that they are made with off-the-shelf equipment and techniques.
The productions are not expensive—there may, for example, be zooming of still
pictures rather than moving images. Third, the stories are small-scale, centring
the narrator’s own, personal life and experiences and usually told in his or her
own voice.
This is the case with the now classic model of Digital Storytelling developed
by the Center for Digital Storytelling in California from the first half of the
1990s. ‘There are all kinds of stories in our lives that we can develop into
multimedia pieces’, founder of the Center, Joe Lambert (2006, p. 27), explains.
In his book on Digital Storytelling, subtitled ‘Capturing Lives, Creating
Community’, he points out a range of personal stories that could be made about
important relationships to a significant other, honouring and remembering
people who have passed, stories on adventures or accomplishments in one’s
life, on a place that is important to the storyteller, on one’s work, on recovery,
love or discovery (Lambert, 2006, pp. 27–31).
A new media practice emerged. In 2001, the BBC in Wales took up such
Digital Storytelling under the rubric ‘Capture Wales’ (Meadows, 2003). Later,
this small-scale media movement spread to England, Scandinavia, Australia
and other—mostly rich and digitally saturated—parts of the world (Lundby,
forthcoming).
Some of the contributors to this book offer more detailed accounts and
criticisms of these stories of Digital Storytelling. Kelly McWilliam and John
Hartley introduce the Center for Digital Storytelling in California and Capture
Wales as background to their own domestic experiences in Australia. The two
expand the map in their book Story Circle. Digital Storytelling Around the World
(Hartley & McWilliam, forthcoming). Nancy Thumim examines critically the
Capture Wales initiative. She also examines another case of storytelling using
digital means, namely the ‘London Voices’ project at the Museum of Lon-
don; an oral history project. This is an example of Digital Storytelling defined
more broadly. Both are mediating self-representations, involving the digitisa-
tion of ‘ordinary people’s’ stories, displayed on publicly available websites, made
through cultural institutions in society (Thumim, 2007, forthcoming).
The stories made in such projects may be counted in tens of thousands. The
Center for Digital Storytelling alone has helped produce some 12,000 stories
through a fifteen-year-long history.1 Hundreds of stories are displayed on the

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:2 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 Introduction ™ 3

BBC Wales website, and there are many, many other outlets around the globe.
Still, this remains a small-scale media practice compared to dominant practices
of television production and consumption, or other big media.
One reason why ‘classic’ Digital Storytelling will stay relatively small is
the time-demanding production process that is required. This is not primarily
about getting familiar with the technology. Rather, it is the art of making a
good story. The Center for Digital Storytelling, as well as the Capture Wales
and similar projects, requests their storytellers to attend workshops over sev-
eral days, even weeklong. Before actually producing their multimedia tales, the
participants spend time with supervisors in a ‘Story Circle’ where the plot and
text of their digital stories are developed (Lambert, 2006, pp. 93–101; Hartley
& McWilliam, forthcoming).
‘Storytelling’ implies the shaping of the story as well as the sharing of it
with others afterwards. It was the Internet that expanded the space of Digital
Storytelling—it offered new options to share the ‘classic’ small-scale stories
created in story circles at various corners of the globe. The World Wide Web
also gave rise to new forms: Blogging, in text only or with video, as well as
the social networking sites on the web offer new opportunities to share short
personal stories. These new media practices are taught and learned from per-
son to person. No workshop is required to put up a self-representational short
video on YouTube or your personal profile on Facebook and MySpace. Not
all of these ‘profiles’ are stories in a proper sense, as David Brake discusses in
Chapter 16 of this book, but much of the blogging and social networking on
the web are ‘personal media practices’ (Lüders, 2007). The appearance of sto-
rytelling on mobile phones (Klastrup, 2007) adds to the expansion. Much of
this activity should be regarded and studied as Digital Storytelling. The same
may apply to digital stories produced in designated workshops for museums or
other institutions. All such self-representational forms are here included in the
term, and the phenomenon of, Digital Storytelling.
Nick Couldry in Chapter 3 defines the space of Digital Storytelling to
encompass ‘the whole range of personal stories now being told in potentially
public form using digital media resources’. This is a suitable definition for this
book. It does not aim at a comprehensive overview of all forms of personal
Digital Storytelling; rather, some political and theoretical issues across forms
are brought to the fore.

Giving a voice?
Does Digital Storytelling have democratic potential? The problems of scalability
concern Hartley, in Chapter 11. Can enough stories be made and enjoyed by

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:3 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 4 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

enough people to sustain this media practice as compelling, connected and

democratic, he asks. Couldry is sceptical, as well; although he acknowledges
the ‘deficit of recognition’ in our society that Digital Storytelling may meet.
He fears that Digital Storytelling is, and will remain, a largely isolated phe-
nomenon, cut off from the wider distribution of social and cultural authority
and respect. Couldry discusses critically the claim that Digital Storytelling has
democratic potential. He listens deeply to the story told by Joe Lambert and
other pioneers. Particularly in the US setting, the initiators of Digital Story-
telling, for reasons of social justice, wanted to give marginalised groups a voice
(Lambert, 2006, pp. 1–4).
This media practice may well remain small-scale. Nevertheless, for those
who employ Digital Storytelling in their own lives, this practice may actually
give them a voice, or be significant in other ways. The democratic potential in
Digital Storytelling may be released within institutional settings, as Ola Erstad
and Kenneth Silseth argue in their chapter on agency in Digital Storytelling
in schools (Chapter 12). Whether this actually becomes a democratic move
depends on how many turn to such practices, as well as on the edge it may have
in civil society and political life.
There is potential: Digital Storytelling is a bottom-up activity. It is a ‘user-
generated’ media practice. Digital Storytelling is performed by amateurs and
not by media professionals. So-called ‘ordinary people’ develop the necessary
competences to tell their own stories with new digital tools. However, one
may make a distinction to the user-generated perspective, as Brake does in his
chapter. He characterises ‘lay’ productions on sites like YouTube or MySpace
as bottom-up compared to the institutionally led projects that are produced by
‘amateurs’ but under professional guidance.
The new media that are applied for Digital Storytelling are easily at hand
and simple to use. They could turn users into producers: Hartley, in his chapter
(Chapter 11), even terms them ‘self-made media’. Mostly, Digital Storytell-
ing takes place with standard software on standard laptops or PCs. In addi-
tion, a digital camera and a scanner to digitise paper photos are useful and a
video camera may add footage. Especially in societies with a widespread digital
(prod)user competence, the road is not a long one to a digital story that could
be shared with others. While the Digital Storytelling workshops spend some
energy on the application of the multimedia software, most of the time is de-
voted to the development of the story itself. The narratives that come out of the
story circles are usually highly personal. They are self-representations. So are
many postings on the web, in blogs as well as on social networking sites.

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:4 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 Introduction ™ 5

Self-representations
The focus of this book is on self-representational digital stories. These are per-
sonal stories, told with the storyteller’s own voice. They are representations in
the first person. The ‘self ’ is social, shaped in relationships, and through the
stories we tell about who we are. This applies in ‘classic’ Digital Storytelling as
in new forms of social networking. Although

it indeed appears that, for many young people, social networking is ‘all about me,
me, me’, this need not imply a narcissistic self-absorption. Rather, following Mead’s
(1934) fundamental distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ as twin aspects of the self,
social networking is about ‘me’ in the sense that it reveals the self embedded in the peer
group, as known to and represented by others, rather than the private ‘I’ known best by
oneself. (Livingstone, 2008)

Current communication technologies may alter the role of the self in the so-
cial world, Waite (2003) claims. The representations of selves in various forms
of Digital Storytelling are part of collective patterns of ‘Modernity and Self-
Identity’ (Giddens, 1991), although Giddens’ ‘armchair introspection’ may eas-
ily slide into a ‘disregard of the more mundane examples of reflexivity involved
in digital practices’, as Kirsten Drotner writes in her chapter (Chapter 4). They
make individual stories on shaping of identity. Digital Storytelling is about
‘crafting an agentive self ’ (Hull & Katz, 2006).
David Gauntlett, in this book as well as in Creative Explorations (Gauntlett,
2007), demonstrates how people may represent their identities—not in Digital
Storytelling but by building metaphors with Lego bricks and figures. A similar
construction process takes place with the digitised raw elements of text, images
and sound that are built into a short, personal digital story. If the story is self-
representational, it displays aspects of identity.
Self-representational stories may appear authentic. This, however, is an as-
sumed authenticity, as pointed out by Birgit Hertzberg Kaare and Knut Lund-
by in their chapter (Chapter 6). Because of the close links to the autobiography
of the narrator, Digital Storytelling is often regarded as a genuine or authentic
activity. The slogan from the Center for Digital Storytelling that ‘Everybody
has a story to tell’ is, in a way, misleading. A person could have many stories to
tell. The authenticity of the digital story is not a given. To play with narrative
is to play with identity.
The outcome of digital narration takes many forms, dependent on the us-
ers’ individual resources and the affordances of the software they apply, Lotte
Nyboe and Kirsten Drotner maintain in their chapter (Chapter 9) on identity

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:5 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 6 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

aspects of Digital Storytelling. Based on a study of young people’s produc-

tion of digital animations, the authors in particular look at identity formation
in relation to digital forms of co-production (cf. de Leeuw & Rydin, 2007).
Nyboe and Drotner see the aesthetic dimension of cultural identity as a key
to the processes of digital narration. They argue that there is a need to reframe
existing theories of cultural identity and cultural production in light of the
digital mode.

Digital narratives
It does matter that it’s digital, as Tone Bratteteig states in her chapter (Chapter
15). Technology is an important part of how people express themselves and
communicate with others. Characteristics of digital media influence digital
stories and storytelling practices. Therefore, she argues, it is important to ad-
dress technical issues as a part of Digital Storytelling.
Digital media facilitate, for one, the possibilities of narrative co-produc-
tion and participation. Classic Digital Storytelling may appear as an individual
exercise—telling ‘my’ story—but is actually deeply rooted in the collaborative
processes of the story circle of the production workshop, and maybe in template
narratives in the overall culture, as Ola Erstad and James V. Wertsch point out
in their chapter. Similarly, storytellers on social networking sites mostly act in
their own names, usually upon wide and deep processes of collaboration and
informal learning from peers.
Such collaboration relates to questions of authorship and authority. Larry
Friedlander, in Chapter 10, writes about narrative strategies in a digital age
under the changing relationship between authorship and authority. With the
appearance of the digital, interactive experience, Friedlander holds, we get sto-
ries that may multiply the authors, distribute their energy across a wide field
of participants, redefine their powers and limits and rewrite all the rules. This
is a more general argument, relevant to various forms of digital narratives, par-
ticularly those in interactive computer games. ‘Digital narratives aspire to the
variety and plentitude of a “world” rather than to the fixed structure of a text’,
Friedlander argues. Even with a short, personal digital story the author may be
able to share glimpses of a world with the reader/user.
If not a ‘world’ in the immersive sense of digital narration in interactive
games, small-scale Digital Storytelling may take shape in ‘discursively ordered
domains’, as McWilliam argues in her account of Australian projects. This
comprises a ‘constant negotiation over what, precisely, digital storytelling is,
how it is best applied, what it is for, and where it should be located’, she writes.

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:6 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 Introduction ™ 7

The developments of Digital Storytelling within ‘discursively ordered domains’

point to the context in which such digital media practices operate and their
larger social, cultural and economic significance, McWilliam reminds.

Challenging institutions
Digital stories are personal, small-scale stories. However, the wider meaning or
significance of Digital Storytelling has to be sought in the large-scale contexts
of its production and uses. Digital Storytelling almost without exception takes
place within institutional frameworks.
This book explains how the user-generated bottom-up practices of Digital
Storytelling challenge not only big media but also traditional schools. While
Digital Storytelling has mostly been applied outside the educational setting,
self-representational Digital Storytelling can be used as a tool for the fostering
of agency (that is ‘the capacity to make a difference’) among young people in
school, Erstad and Silseth argue in their chapter (see also McWilliam’s chap-
ter). Digital Storytelling puts emphasis on important issues that face the edu-
cational system, concerning the way students are engaged in their own learning
processes by using new technologies. Digital Storytelling challenges the school
by affecting the relationship between student and teacher roles, by exploring
the understanding of what knowledge is, by engaging the students in a collec-
tive way, by the multimodality of its stories or texts, and by making explicit the
relationships between formal and informal contexts of learning.
Hartley, in Chapter 11, notes that Digital Storytelling challenges the me-
dia industries by providing a myriad of stories. Broadcasting, cinema and pub-
lishing houses have for decades been busy scaling up audiences, focusing on
distribution rather than production. Story-telling has been taken care of by
highly trained professionals. User-generated Digital Storytelling to some ex-
tent may change this.
Differences in media structure between Britain and the US underline the
importance of institutional aspects: despite all the big broadcasting networks,
it may be more difficult to get a marginalised voice heard in the US media
market than with the public service-based media system in Britain.2 The
Center for Digital Storytelling in California was set up as an alternative to
the main media system; in contrast, Capture Wales was established within the
main public service broadcasting company. In a public service institution a
broad range of interests and voices could expect to be represented, although
this may not in fact happen, but in Capture Wales, participants from Story
Circle workshops were invited to shape and share their digital story within the
institution.

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:7 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 8 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

Among the institutional activities transformed by digital media use is fam-

ily life. Elisabeth Staksrud writes about how parents are being challenged by
their children’s online life. Her chapter (Chapter 13) explores, with material
from Norway, contextual factors that influence children’s self-representations
online.
The questions on ‘mediatized stories’ are about various transformations
that might take place with digital storytelling, as discussed in several chapters
in this book (e.g., Erstad & Wertsch, Couldry, Drotner, Friedlander).

Multimodality—semiotic transformations
The new media capacity of prime significance in the production of Digital
Storytelling is the multimodality offered by digitalisation. Composition across
modes is nothing new. Even oral storytelling may apply a range of modes in
a complex whole, as a composition of tale, ballad, melody and text (Ortutay,
1964, p. 186). Multimodality need not be digital at all, but through digital
technologies multimodality is made ‘easy, usual, “natural”’ (Kress, 2003, p. 5). A
single binary code could be used for representations in a variety of multimodal
compositions to appear in combinations of speech, music, text, graphics, still or
moving images. The binary representation is an abstraction from the fact that
current is continuous, as Tone Bratteteig reminds in her chapter in this book.
What ‘ordinary’ people do with the multimodal variety of semiotic re-
sources becomes interesting. With digitalisation ‘the different modes have
technically become the same at some level of representation, and they can be
operated by one multi-skilled person, using one interface, one mode of physi-
cal manipulation, so that he or she can ask, at every point: “Shall I express this
with sound or music?”, “Shall I say it visually or verbally?” and so on’ (Kress &
van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 2).
In Digital Storytelling, amateurs could make such semiotic decisions with
standard software on regular PCs or laptops. Glynda Hull and Mark Evan
Nelson (2005) set out to locate ‘the semiotic power of multimodality’ during
which they analyse a digital story, ‘Lyfe-N-Rhyme’, created by a young man in
West Oakland, California. Multimodal capacity is a key to understanding Dig-
ital Storytelling, as compared to oral or written storytelling, and Hull and Nel-
son’s empirical studies strongly confirm that multimodal composing depends
on computer technologies. They locate the semiotic power of multimodality in
Digital Storytelling in the blending of new and old textual forms. In this book
Nelson and Hull expand their research into studies of multimodal selves, ap-
plying perspectives from Bakhtin (Chapter 7).

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:8 7/30/08 10:04:44 PM

 Introduction ™ 9

Multimodality or digital remix (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006, p. 107) is the

key to understanding the types of narrative that are created in Digital Story-
telling (Meadows, 2003; Hull & Nelson, 2005). Multimodal composing is not
an additive art; ‘a multimodal text can create a different system of signification,
one that transcends the collective contribution of its constitutive parts’ (Hull
& Nelson, 2005, p. 225). Digital Storytelling should not be understood as
a phenomenon equivalent to either oral storytelling or to written narratives
(Scheidt, 2006). Digital Storytelling creates a new composition.
Gunther Kress draws attention to such semiotic transformations that
take place in multimodal practices. The multimodal resources made available
with digital media ‘provide users of the resource with the ability to reshape
the (form of the) resources at all times in relation to the needs of the interests
of the sign-maker’. These transformations operate on the forms and structures
within a mode and have to be complemented by the concept of transduction;
that accounts for the shift of semiotic material across modes (Kress, 2003, p.
36). For matters of convenience, transduction is here included in the concept
of semiotic transformations.

Narrative transformations
Larry Friedlander illuminates, in his chapter, what I will term the narrative
transformations of Digital Storytelling. Friedlander refers to another key char-
acteristic of digital media alongside multimodality, namely, the interactive ca-
pacity. He considers ‘the havoc being wrought by contemporary digital narra-
tives’ part of the ‘cultural transformations’ of our time.
Protean transformations, that is the ever-changing and versatile, charac-
terise the digital options, Friedlander reminds us:

Great modern artists, such as Joyce or Beckett, have tried to convey their vision of this
fragmented world by subverting the formal order of earlier novels. . . . This is an art
of protean transformations, disrupted and unresolved plots, and characters who have a
weak and wavering sense of a self. Such highly unstable fiction mirrors the shifting,
phantasmagoric quality of modern experience. And, yes, all this formal instability can
sound quite like a foreshadowing of the digital world. (My emphasis)

Although Friedlander treats digital narrative, in a more general sense the ‘laws
of transformation’ apply to small-scale personal digital stories as well:

Each of its elements—space, time, objects, beings, and actions—can be selected, ar-
ranged, and transformed for the needs of an aesthetic experience. Thoughts can be-

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:9 7/30/08 10:04:45 PM

 10 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

come visible, objects can metamorphose according to emotional and aesthetic rules,
and background elements (such as floors or skies) can suddenly communicate sym-
bolic meanings. Within the world, all obeys the law of transformation, all is choice and
interaction. (My emphasis)

Narrative transformations relate to semiotic transformations, on different lev-

els of analysis of Digital Storytelling. If semiotic transformations are micro
processes, narrative transformations appear on a meso level. However, Digital
Storytelling takes place within macro contexts.

Institutional transformations
Challenging institutions, Digital Storytelling may imply transformations of or
within the context in which it operates. Social institutions may be conceptual-
ised as concrete: schools, for example. Institutions may also be understood in a
generalised sense, in this case, as education or even wider as socialisation.
Stig Hjarvard (2004, 2007, forthcoming 2008), on such a general level,
has worked out a theory of institutional transformations related to the work
of media. By ‘media’ he understands a ‘technology that allows transfer of or
interaction with a symbolic content across time or space’ (2004, p. 48). The
transformations that Hjarvard observes are termed ‘mediatization’. They may
cut across different social institutions but could influence institutions in vari-
ous ways and degrees. The media are integrated into other institutions at the
same time as the media become an institution in its own right. ‘Thus, social
interaction within institutions (e.g., the family), between institutions (e.g., sci-
ence and politics) and in society as a whole is performed by and through the
media’ (Hjarvard, 2007, p. 3).
Mediatization is defined as a ‘process through which core elements of a so-
cial or cultural activity (like work, leisure, play, etc.) assume media form’ (Hjar-
vard, 2004, p. 48; 2007). Mediatization could take place in a strong form, where
the institution (the social or cultural activity) itself assumes media form so that
the activity has to be performed through interaction with a medium. Media-
tization could also take in a weaker form, where the symbolic content and the
institutional activity are ‘influenced by media environments that they gradu-
ally become more dependent upon and interconnected with’. Combinations of
weak and strong forms may, of course, also occur (Hjarvard, 2004, p. 49).
Digital Storytelling may be a limited media phenomenon in the major
processes of mediatization but the transforming logic is the same. The old art
of storytelling is one of those social and cultural activities that, given the digital

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:10 7/30/08 10:04:45 PM

 Introduction ™ 11

opportunities, may assume media form. Such transformations pave their way
into storytelling institutions such as schools and even media organisations.

Mediatization or mediation?
The concepts of mediation and mediatization were introduced in media studies
well before digital media became applied in storytelling. However, the proc-
esses are intensified by digital media with their capacity for semiotic, narra-
tive and institutional transformations. In his chapter, mapping out conceptual
choices to grasp the emerging space of Digital Storytelling, Couldry counters
Hjarvard’s proposal on ‘mediatization’. Couldry prefers the concept of media-
tion to grasp the social and cultural transformations due to the role of media.
The discussion between Couldry and Hjarvard highlights the clear posi-
tions of theoretical work of British (e.g., Schlesinger, 1993; Silverstone, 1999)
and Scandinavian (e.g., Hernes, 1977; Asp, 1986) media scholars, respectively.3
There is a common reference to the concept of ‘media logic’ as coined by the
American scholars David Altheide and Robert Snow (1979). This reference is
either used affirmatively, as by Hjarvard in the mediatization camp, or critically
as is usual among the mediation theorists (like Couldry in this book).
To Hjarvard, mediatization generally, ‘denotes the process through which
society increasingly is becoming dependent on the logic of the media’ (Hjar-
vard, 2007, p. 2; Schulz, 2004). Couldry finds this to be linear thinking, based
on a tendency to claim broad social and cultural transformations from one
single type of media-based logic.
Couldry’s claim may itself be a bit one-eyed. Hjarvard has a multifaceted
understanding of ‘media logic’ as the ‘organizational, technological, and aesthetic
functioning, including the ways in which media allocate material and symbolic
resources and work through formal and informal rules’ (Hjarvard, 2007, p. 3, ital-
ics in original). Digital technologies in Digital Storytelling definitely do not
obey just a single logic. The multimodality of digital media operates according
to mixed logics (Kress, 2003, pp. 1–6).
Hjarvard minimises the meaning of mediation. ’Mediation’ for him refers
to communication and interaction through a medium in a particular setting,
where the message and the relation between sender and receiver may be af-
fected. Analyses of mediation focus on how the media influence both message
and relation between sender and receiver, he holds (Hjarvard, 2007, pp. 3–4).
This comes close to regarding ‘mediation’ as representation. I will term this a
narrow or focused conceptualisation of ‘mediation’.
When Couldry performs his friendly attack on the Scandinavian under-

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:11 7/30/08 10:04:45 PM

 12 ™ Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories

standing, Hjarvard’s conceptualisation of ‘mediatization’ is characterised in a

similarly narrow way. Couldry links Hjarvard’s understanding of ‘mediatization’
to media form. This is to focus on ‘a particular transformative logic or mecha-
nism that is understood to do something distinctive to (that is, to ‘mediatize’)
particular processes, objects and fields’, he writes in his chapter. Mediatization
in the narrow or focused sense points to the transformation of processes into
forms or formats suitable for media re-presentation. So, for Hjarvard as well
as for Couldry, the narrow definition of the other’s main concept is focused on
representations.
The British colleagues apply the concept of mediation to the larger trans-
formative processes. Actually, the British do not have the word ‘mediatiza-
tion’ in their vocabulary. Roger Silverstone (2005, p. 189) influenced by Jesús
Martín-Barbero (1993) did make a broad, all-encompassing definition of ‘me-
diation’: The whole range of transformative processes, institutionally and tech-
nologically driven, end up embedded, where the social works in turn as a me-
diator; institutions, and technologies as well as the meanings that are delivered
by them are mediated in the social processes of reception and consumption.
Against this, Hjarvard’s concept, especially in the strong but maybe also in the
weak form, can be termed broad ‘mediatization’: a long-term process through
which core elements of a social or cultural activity assume media. Roughly, one
could say that ‘broad mediation’ covers about the same transformation proc-
esses as ‘broad mediatization’.

Tension and mediation

Whether one accepts that transformations due to digital technologies and
competences make digital stories into ‘mediatized stories’ or not, one has to
admit that the shaping of digital stories is subject to mediation.
Thumim (2007), following the media studies path, points out tensions
shaping self-representations in Digital Storytelling projects. She suggests that
the mediation process is constituted through these tensions. She explores the
notion of the ‘ordinary person’ as a construct, the notion of community as a
construction, and how there are tensions about how to define and achieve qual-
ity. In her chapter in this book (Chapter 5) she explores how processes of cul-
tural mediation are constituted through tensions in these areas.
Within the broader definition of Digital Storytelling as personal stories
being told in public form with digital tools, Thumim looks at one project fol-
lowing the California model and another project that has nothing to do with

Lundby et al.indd Sec1:12 7/30/08 10:04:45 PM

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