Web 2.0 storytelling overview

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Introduction NITLE workshops 2008 Bryan Alexander

What is it?
An emergent set of storytelling practices, growing out of Web 2.0 technologies and cultural forms.

Caveats
This framework might be larger than your project
Much emerges through exploration

Who are people in this?
Roles
Producer
Consumer
Scholar
Teacher
Consultant
Supporter
Questions
Why these platforms?
How to discover and participate?
How to support?

But wait, what's storytelling?
“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.”

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.
There was a knock on the door.”
(Fredric Brown, “Knock”, 1948)

Beginning, middle, end
The Freytag triangle
Delight and instruct

Put another way
What are stories about? What is content?
About someone important
About an important event
About what one does
Center for Digital Storytelling, Digital Storytelling Cookbook. http:// www.storycenter.org/cookbook.html

Put another way
What are stories about? What is content?
Personal versus impersonal
Creative fiction vs nonfiction composition
Curricular vs campus vs personal vs etc.
(storyteller, Ripton Vermont, 2008)

Web 1.0 storytelling
What can we learn from it?
Hypertext
Multimedia
Browser-focused
Offline, analog content (textbooks)
Evanescent

Web 1.0 storytelling
Example: Dreaming Methods (2000ff)
http:// www.dreamingmethods.com /

Example: “Ted’s Caving Journal” (circa 2001)
(one copy, from http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html )

Features:
Multilinear
Multimedia
Very Web
Serial structure

Digital storytelling roots
Digital Storytelling movement
Digital Storytelling at Ukaiah, 2006

Educational projects growing
Community
Curricula
Support
( http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/StorytellingintheAgeofthe/42327 )

Digital storytelling
Transmedia storytelling (Henry Jenkins)
Multiple platforms
Commercial
Fan base…

Digital storytelling
…Franchise or brand
Control across sites
Diffuse boundaries

Email chain letters, jokes
Social
Boundaries fuzzy
Microcontent
Virtual community facilitation (1980s on)
(Snopes.com)

One theory
http://www.unfiction.com/compendium/2006/11/10/undefining-arg/2/
Chaotic fiction , including ARGs

What's web 2.0 about?
Quick recap
Microcontent
Social software
Multiply authored content
within content
located externally
Perpetual beta
Boundaries can be hard to find
All issues still on the table

Platforms
Blogosphere and character
“ As one day’s posts build on points raised or refuted in a previous day’s, readers must actively engage the process of “discovering” the author, and of parsing from fragment after fragment who is speaking to them, and why, and from where whether geographically, mentally, politically, or otherwise.”
-Steve Himmer, “The Labyrinth Unbound” (2003)

Platforms
Blogosphere and time
“ You know what's funny? I bet if I posted this email message on my blog, as a story, I'd get two dozen emails from readers — the ones who know how clueless I can be — telling me to get a clue, that you're obviously taking someone else. A bagel .”
-Postmodern Sass
http://www.postmodernsass.com/blogger/2005/04/my-baby-she-wrote-me-letter.html

Blog as story diary
Or several blogs: Dionaea House and Loreen Mathers ( http://www.dionaea-house.com/default.htm )
“ The LiveJournal of Zachary Marsh”

Blog as story diary
Futureblogging: “Harvey Feldspar's Geoblog”
( http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/local ) -Bruce Sterling, Wired , 2007

Bookblogging
http://www.pulsethebook.com/ - “networked book” (Institute for the Future of the Book)
And others http:// simonofspace.blogspot.com /

Bookblogging
"a networked book is an open book designed to be written, edited and read in a networked environment.“ (IFTFTB)
See also Googlization of Everything and Flightpaths ( http://www.googlizationofeverything.com/ and http:// www.flightpaths.net/blog/index.php/about / )

Republish content via blog
Pedagogy
Social feedback
Publicity
Pepys Diary
Dracula Blogged
Ulysses and da Vinci per day
( http://wwar1.blogspot.com/ )

Bookblogging
Extended networks
Support wikis (example: Pynchon)
William Gibson lost his Node
( http://www.nodemagazine.com/ )

Microbloglosphere
Twitter: a single narrative
Good Captain
http://twitter.com/goodcaptain
http://loose-fish.com/

Microbloglosphere
Twitter: aphorisms
Jenny Holzer
http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

Microbloglosphere
Twitter: class en masse
http://twitter.com/manyvoices

Wikistorytelling
The Penguin novel
( http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page )

Wikistorytelling Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door? “ About”, http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/About

Flickr and storytelling
Tell a story in 5 frames group
“ Gender Miscommunication” (Nightingai1e, 2006)

IV. Web 2.0 storytelling

IV. Web 2.0 storytelling “ Gender Miscommunication” (Nightingai1e, 2006)

Flickr and storytelling
In the Tell a story in 5 frames group, 'Alone With The Sand'
(moliere1331, 2005)

Social photo stories Example: « Farm to Food », Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories

Flickr, Tell A Story in Five Frames group ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/ )
Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Social photo stories Example: "Food to Farm", Eli the Bearded (2008)

Pedagogies:
Remix
Archive work
Social presentation
Visual literacy
( http://www.flickr.com/groups/visualstory/discuss/72157603786255599/ ; http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/ )

Social photos
Social image hypertext: Mission stencil story
( http://www.flickr.com/photos/9793231@N05/sets/72157600706628117/ )

Social photo storytelling pedagogy: USF digital journalism class (David Silver) ( http://silverinsf.blogspot.com/2007/02/digital-journalism-flickr-project.html )

Social photos
Pedagogy
Shifting work across venues
Archiving
Personal and private
( http://usfblogtastic.blogspot.com/ )

Social slides
Barbara Ganley, “Into the Storm” (2007)
( http://www.slideshare.net/bgblogging/intothestorm http://bgexperiments.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/into-the-storm/ )

Embedded within Slideshare Web platform apparatus

Embedded within blog

Storytelling by p odcast
The Yellow Sheet , by Librivox team (2007)
Text then podcast
http://librivox.org/the-yellow-sheet-by-librivox-volunteers/
More: Podiobooks, http://www.podiobooks.com/

Web video storytelling
Connect with I ( http://www.connectwithi.com/ )
Serial video
Fan content
Physical content

Web video storytelling
lonelygirl15 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonelygirl15 )
YouTube serial video content
Local fan content
Distributed response
Hoax plot

Storytellerster
MySpace, Facebook as platform
Example: Silver Ladder
(Two of Clubs character on Myspace)

Untapped or supplementary?
Folksonomies?
for description: http://www.pulsethebook.com/
ManyEyes http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes ; cf also Wordle

Untapped or supplementary?
Social Bookmarking: s upplementary?
Wrangle information about Web 2.0 storytelling

Multiplicity of platforms
Actually, none exist in isolation
some projects are based in multiple platforms
aura of social interaction based wherever people feel like it
can start in one, then expand

Multiplicity of platforms
New forms combining categories into one?
Voicethread Storybox ( http://www.story-box.co.uk/index.php )

Alternate reality games
Permeability of game boundary (space and time)
Focus on distributed, collaborative cognition
Increased ephemerality
(Perplex City, 2003-2006)

Political ARG
(World Without Oil, May 2007)

ARG pedagogy
Creation for constructivism
Information literacy
Object of study
(Nine Inch Nails game, 2007)

Non-digital roots
Epistolary novels
Victorian serials
Pulp serials
Radio
Soaps
(Dickens, Bleak House installment, PBS site)

Practices and principles
How to start
Idea germ - maybe a character, a concept to explain
What audience?
Which platform tends to lead to the kind of results you’d prefer?

How to start : preparation
Lessons from ARGs
Preload lots of material before release
Art of lack of control
Basic PM
Build in risk control
Timeline (maybe milestones, maybe gates)

Digital Storytelling’s 7 principles
Point of view
Dramatic question
Emotional content
Voice (style)
Soundtrack (and other media)
Economy
Pacing
“ Digital Storytelling Cookbook”

Time
Wilkie Collins: "Make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em wait"
keep it coming (cf ask a Ninja)
Big time: serial
Little time: accretive

Space
Accretion
Linear
Rhizomatic
Subtraction
Deletion (wiki, comment)
Link rot

Character
You: persona
Creative or historical character
Blog as character (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)
Twitter as character (Eric Rice)

Setting
Sometimes ambient
Or use linked services (maps)

Triangular desire (Rene Girard, Eve Sedgwick)
Connections between characters
Watch for connections between audience members
Check platform and aura

Fab your lexia chunks
Recap/summary of story
Cliffhanger
Internal organizing statement
Discrete argument point
Shift in Lego pieces
POV
Timeline
Embedded story
Meta, help, disclaimer
(And they move without you.)

New practices emerging: hoax
She's a Flight Risk http://esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030922_mfe_isabella_1.html
Conservapedia?
lonelygirl15

Futures
Web 2.0 story content might privilege mysteries, since there needs to be a hook to drive readers from piece to distributed piece. Note, for instance, the predominance of mysteries in alternate reality games.

Futures
Web 2.0 stories are likely to focus on time as a major structural element.
smaller Web 2.0 stories which don't do this
are Web 2.0 stories always in beta?

Futures
Stories about Web 2.0 storytelling
Alex Payne, “They Stopped Calling It Rendezvous” (2005)

Futures
Await the backlash.
First will come the Rosens and egostorytelling.
Next will be the scary Web update: news media, marketing.

Futures
Quality
Some are lame
Emerging standards, aesthetics?
Reputation as a whole

Futures
Could Web 2.0 storytelling be a minor literature?
Eastgate hypertext
MUDs, MOOs
IFiction

Futures
Or could it be a transition stage to new things?
Eastgate hypertext -> WorldWideWeb
MUDs, MOOs -> Croquet, Second Life
IFiction -> gaming

Caveats
Project versus piece versus principle
Framework is not your project

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
-blog commentators Andy Havens, Steve Kaye, H Pierce, D'Arcy Norman
-Alan Levine!
-all Web 2.0 storytellers and participants
-ELI 2008 conference workshop participants
(Photos uncredited are mine)

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE)
http://nitle.org
http://b2e.nitle.org

Web 2.0 storytelling overview

by Bryan Alexander on Aug 05, 2008

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

Web 2.0 storytelling overview — Presentation Transcript