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Web 2.0 Storytellin
g:Introductio
nNITLE workshops2008
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.”
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)
But wait, what's storytelling?• Beginning, middle, end• The Freytag triangle
• Delight and instruct
Put another way
What are stories about? What is content?
1. About someone important2. About an important event3. 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
Digital storytelling roots
Educational projects growing
• Community
• Curricula • Support
(http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/StorytellingintheAgeofthe/42327)
Digital storytellingTransmedia
storytelling (Henry Jenkins)
• Multiple platforms• Commercial• Fan base…
Digital storytelling• …Franchise or
brand• Control across
sites• Diffuse boundaries
Digital storytelling roots
Email chain letters, jokes
• Social• Boundaries
fuzzy• Microcontent• Virtual
community facilitation (1980s on)(Snopes.com)
Digital storytelling roots
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 Sasshttp://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
Bookblogginghttp://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/)
MicrobloglosphereTwitter: 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
WikistorytellingThe 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
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
Social photo stories
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)
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/ )
Social photosSocial 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
PedagogyShifting 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 podcast
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 storytellingConnect 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: supplementary?
• 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?
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)
Practices and principles
Digital Storytelling’s 7 principles1. Point of view2. Dramatic question3. Emotional content4. Voice (style)5. Soundtrack (and other media)6. Economy7. Pacing
“Digital Storytelling Cookbook”
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
Practices and principles
Space• Accretion
–Linear–Rhizomatic
• Subtraction–Deletion (wiki, comment)
–Link rot
Practices and principles
Character• You: persona• Creative or historical character• Blog as character (Kathleen
Fitzpatrick)• Twitter as character (Eric Rice)
Practices and principles
Setting
• Sometimes ambient
• Or use linked services (maps)
Practices and principles
Triangular desire (Rene Girard, Eve Sedgwick)
• Connections between characters • Watch for connections between
audience members– Check platform and aura
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.)
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
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.1. First will come the Rosens and
egostorytelling.2. 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