This document discusses the emerging practices of Web 2.0 storytelling. It defines storytelling as having a beginning, middle, and end, and explores how stories are being told across multiple new media platforms like blogs, wikis, Flickr, podcasts and more. Examples are provided of collaborative stories created through these new forms of networked storytelling. Challenges and opportunities are also examined, like whether collective creation can produce a coherent narrative.

1. Web 2.0 Storytelling: Introduction NITLE workshops 2008 Bryan Alexander

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

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

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

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

6. But wait, what's storytelling? “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.” (Fredric Brown, “Knock”, 1948)

7. But wait, what's storytelling? Beginning, middle, end The Freytag triangle Delight and instruct

8. 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

9. 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)

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

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

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

13. Features: Multilinear Multimedia Very Web Serial structure

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

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

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

17. Digital storytelling …Franchise or brand Control across sites Diffuse boundaries

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

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

20. 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

21. 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)

22. 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

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

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

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

26. 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 / )

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

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

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

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

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

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

33. 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

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

35. IV. Web 2.0 storytelling

36. IV. Web 2.0 storytelling

37. IV. Web 2.0 storytelling

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

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

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

41. Social photo stories

42. Social photo stories

43. 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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

50. Embedded within Slideshare Web platform apparatus

51. Embedded within blog

52. 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/

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

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

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

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

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

58. 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

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

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

61. Political ARG (World Without Oil, May 2007)

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

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

64. 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?

65. Practices and principles 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)

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

67. Practices and principles 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

68. Practices and principles Space Accretion Linear Rhizomatic Subtraction Deletion (wiki, comment) Link rot

69. Practices and principles Character You: persona Creative or historical character Blog as character (Kathleen Fitzpatrick) Twitter as character (Eric Rice)

70. Practices and principles Setting Sometimes ambient Or use linked services (maps)

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

72. Practices and principles 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.)

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

74. 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.

75. 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?

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

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

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

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

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

81. Caveats Project versus piece versus principle Framework is not your project

82. 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)

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