This document discusses developing ethical guidelines for using digital storytelling in higher education. It begins by introducing the context of developing these guidelines as part of a community of inquiry on this topic. It then discusses how digital storytelling has been used in higher education for purposes like student empowerment and community engagement projects. The document outlines some assumptions of digital storytelling practices and also questions that arise around issues like consent, power dynamics, and responsibility towards storytellers. It advocates adapting guidelines to different contexts and drawing from theories like Joan Tronto's ethics of care, which emphasizes care as a political project and practicing ethics through everyday interactions. The document concludes by providing references for further resources on this topic.

1. Towards ethical
guidelines for
DST in HE
Daniela Gachago, Jacqui Scheepers & Candice Livingston
Cape Peninsula University of Technology

2. We are here as part of large community of inquiry
- CPUT colleagues and students
- Local and International DST community
- Untold conference - ethics group
Presentation is based on:
Gachago, D., Scheepers, J. & Livingston, C. 2021. Telling
Stories about Stories. Towards ethical guidelines for digital
storytelling in Higher Education. In Bezerra, J., Paterson,
C. & Paphitis, S. (Eds): Challenging the Apartheids of
Knowledge in Higher Education through Social Innovation.
Stellenbosch: Sun Media. link to chapter

3. DSt in Higher Education
- Digital storytelling (DST) has found its way into “every
corner of higher education” (Lambert, 2017, p. vi)
- to empower students through personal reflection, growth,
and the development of new multimodal literacies
- Participatory research methodology for Public Health
Education, but also Professional Development / Teacher
Education
- Community Engagement projects for healing, heritage,
reconciliation, recovery, celebration, resilience,
motivation, etc.

4. Magic of DST in HE

5. Student stories

6. Digital storytelling at CPUT
● Since 2010
● From Education spread into other Faculties
● Across variety of disciplines and contexts
● More or less supported / structured
● More or less personal
● Some training but not enough
● Ethical questions more and more urgent

7. OUR Own practice
- pedagogical tool that unpacks issues around students’
identity and positionality and as such can be implemented
as a socially just pedagogy (Burgess, 2006; Scott Nixon,
2009; Stewart & Gachago, 2016; Stewart, 2017; Stewart &
Ivala , 2017; 2019; Stewart, 2019)
- facilitate difficult conversations in the classroom
around race, gender, and class (Benmayor, 2008; Matias &
Grosland, 2016; Rolón-Dow, 2011).

9. Storycenter’s principles of ethical practice
Amy Hill (Silence Speaks)
- Storyteller’s wellbeing
- Expanding consent / Continual process
- Knowledge production and ownership
- Local relevance
- Distribution

10. Certain assumptions (examples)
- Small group
- Workshop context
- Skilled/trained facilitators
- Voluntary participation / consent / right to withdraw
- Support
- Equal access to technology
- Claim for authenticity
- Right to choose story / language
- Therapy / healing / catharsis
- Demarcated time / relationship

11. Some EThical questions in HE
● Consent? Choice to withdraw? - multilayered
approach / Choice!
● Support? Facilitation skills?
● Assessment? What and how?
● Screening? Ownership of stories? Who has final
control?
● Power dynamics? Teacher / student / researcher
● Aesthetics = process vs product
● Responsibility towards story and storyteller -
where does it end?

12. Adapting to
different contexts

14. JOan Tronto’s ethic of care (1990, 1993, 2001, 2013)
- Centring care as a political project
(2013)
- More than just a disposition - but a
ethical practice
- Rather than looking at big ethical
dilemmas - it is in our everyday
practices of caring for ourselves and
others that we most need to consider and
practice ethical behaviour (2001.
Joan Tronto (1993). Moral Boundaries:
A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

15. Ethics defined
...a species activity that includes
everything that we do to maintain,
continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that
we can live in it as well as possible.
That world includes our bodies, our
selves, and our environment, all of which
we seek to interweave in a complex, life-
sustaining web (see Tronto 1993, 103; Fisher and
Tronto 1990, 40).
CC BY Max Pixel

16. relationality
● complex ethical relationship
● all participants or actors need to be
involved (engagement and ownership)
● Moves beyond dyadic relations for
carer/caregiver, mother/child,
teacher/student
● Contextual / situational - we are all
both caregiver and care receiver at
times (reciprocal)
CC BY Pixabay

17. references/REsources
Black, G.F. et al., 2018. Reflections on the ethics of participatory visual methods to engage communities in
global health research. Global Bioethics, 29(1), pp.22–38. Available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/11287462.2017.1415722.
Gachago, D. & Sykes, P., 2017. Navigating Ethical Boundaries When Adopting Digital Storytelling in Higher
Education. In G. Jamisson et al., eds. Digital Storytelling in Higher Education. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan,
pp. 91–106.
Gubrium, A.C., Hill, A.L. & Flicker, S., 2014. A situated practice of ethics for participatory visual and
digital methods in public health research and practice: A focus on digital storytelling. American Journal of
Public Health, 104(9), pp.1606–1614.
Hill, A., 2014. Digital Storytelling and the Politics of Doing Good: Exploring the Ethics of Bringing
Personal Narratives into Public Spheres. In H. Pleasants & D. E. Salter, eds. Community-based Multiliteracies
and Digital Media Projects. Peter Lang Publishing, pp. 174–178.
Stewart, K.D. & Ivala, E., 2017. Silence, voice, and “other languages”: Digital storytelling as a site for
resistance and restoration in a South African higher education classroom. British Journal of Educational
Technology. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/bjet.12540.

18. References
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Durham, NY: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168-187. doi:
10.1080/13534645.2014.927623
Black, G.F. et al., 2018. Reflections on the ethics of participatory visual methods to engage communities in
global health research. Global Bioethics, 29(1), pp.22–38. Available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/11287462.2017.1415722.
Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press.
Gachago, D., & Sykes, P. 2017. Navigating ethical boundaries when adopting digital storytelling in higher
education. In G. Jamissen, G. Hardy, P. Nordkvelle, & H. Pleasand (Eds.), Digital storytelling higher
education (pp. 91-106). Springer International.
Gubrium, A. C., Hill, A. L., & Flicker, S. (2014). A situated practice of ethics for participatory visual and
digital methods in public health research and practice : A focus on digital storytelling. American Journal of
Public Health, 104(9), 1606–1613.

19. Hill, A. (2014). Digital storytelling and the politics of doing good: Exploring the ethics of bringing
personal narratives into public spheres. In H. Pleasants & D. E. Salter (Eds.), Community-based
multiliteracies and digital media projects (Vol. 39, pp. 174–178). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Posel, D., & Ross, F. C. (2014). Ethical quandaries in social research. Cape Town: HRSC Press.
Reed, A., & Hill, A. (2012). “Don’t keep it to yourself!’’: Digital storytelling with South African Youth.”
International Journal for Media, Technology and LIfelong Learning, 8(2). Retrieved from
http://seminar.net/index.php/component/content/article/75-current-issue/146- dont-keep-it-to-yourself-
digital-storytelling-with-south-african-youth
Stewart, K., & Gachago, D. (2016). Being human today: A digital storytelling pedagogy for transcontinental
border crossing. British Journal of Educational Technology, 47(3), 528–542.
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12450
Sykes, P. & Gachago, D. (2018). Creating "safe-ish" learning spaces - attempts to practice an ethics of care.
South African Journal of Higher Education, 36(6), 83-98.
StoryCenter (2018). Ethical practice. Retrieved from
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55368c08e4b0d419e1c011f7/t/579134a05016e13dde264720/1469133984611/Ethi
cs.pdf
Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York & London: Routledge.
Tronto, J. (2001). An ethic of care. In M. B. Holstein & P. B. Mitzen (Eds.), Ethics in community-based elder
care (pp. 60–68). New York, NY: Springer
Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring democracy. New York and London: New York University Press.