Digital Storytelling in the Age After Vine

Dana Huff’s essay “Telling the Story of America” (2017) points to the ways that digital storytelling can encourage students to consider themselves as part of an expansive American literature. In working to produce personal stories and essays to be expressed through digital storytelling media, Huff hopes that students will recognize links between their own stories and the stories that they read in their American literature courses. Crucially, Huff’s pedagogical practice invites diverse perspectives, as all students produce their own story, providing, as Huff writes, “a link from American literature to the stories of our diverse students living in America and allows students to see their own stories as part of a larger body of American literature” (Huff 37). 

Though Huff’s exercise is productive and important, an earlier essay by Megan Fulwiler and Kim Middleton (2012) suggests that the kind of linear model that Huff’s students employ—from story to script to video to edit, a process that is promoted by the Center for Digital Storytelling—is outdated and relies on the cultural logic of old media, namely film. Fulwiler and Middleton argue that though this practice has had and still has value, its predominance in the instruction of digital storytelling may foreclose alternative and emerging cultural logics that are afforded by new technologies. They write, the traditional print-centric model ”…can unwittingly limit the rich semiotic resources…to that of arrangement and assemblage, rather than…invention discovery, and revision” (42, emphasis added). Meanwhile, we see exactly this process among Huff’s students, who “…wrote script drafts of 300 to 500 words…—enough room to tell a story without being unwieldy as students assemble media such as images and video” (Huff 35, emphasis added). Though Fulwiler and Middleton in 2012 argue that there is potential to use digital storytelling otherwise, we see that in 2017 some digital storytelling in the classroom has yet to embrace the potential for “invention, discovery, and revision” offered by new media. 

Moreover, Fulwiler and Middleton argue that this kind of “translation” from script to video—accomplished by arrangement and assemblage—detracts from the potential meanings of images and sounds because it instead reduces a progression of images to a simple translation of a script (42). My only experience with digital storytelling in a classroom was a sort of combination of these two models. My task was to create three “music videos” of sorts to accompany my poems, meaning that the “script” could not change. The digital media was made to accompany the already-complete poem, not at all to serve as a viable alternative to the poem. As a result, there was no room for the remixing or revising that Candice, in Fulwiler’s and Middleton’s course, found herself requiring. Regardless, the process remained engaging and interesting, and it surpassed a simple "translation" of word to image. In fact, I was already looking for metaphorical imagery that extended the poem beyond literal translation, which Fulwiler and Middleton worry may not happen if students rely on the CDS model. 

Among our changing relations to text, I am interested—as are the scholars we’ve read this week—in new media for digital storytelling. One software I’m aware of is Storybird, which allows users to select an illustration and then provides them with a random (and limited) collection of words that they can choose from to create a poem. Users can also choose several illustrations and then add script to each, creating a picture book. In a way, this software offers an exactly opposite process to the one that “After Digital Storytelling” questions. While Fulwiler and Middleton worry about the potential invention and discovery foreclosed by the script-to-image translation, Storybird provides users with images first and then words, enabling a literacy and narrative that is inspired by imagery. Obviously, this is not always an ideal form of digital storytelling, as it limits students’ ability to capture their own imagery. However, Storybird could be used as one step in many to help students become familiar with the tools and skills that they might need to compose a digital story. 

I would also like to think about Vine (rest in peace), a platform for looping six-second video clips, as a form of digital storytelling. Though Vines are sometimes still scripted, and though they are restricted the same as any video medium is (in that the format of the Vine necessarily dictates the overall product), the strict temporal limitations on Vines contribute significantly to the narrative logic of any Vine, and, often, strategic use of this time limit is what ensures a Vine’s success. A good Vine must operate fully within six seconds, and if it does not, it has failed—no matter how good the initial script or idea is. Though this is true of longer digital storytelling as well, Fulwiler and Middleton reveal that some methods of digital storytelling in the classroom privilege the story and the script. Vine, however, valorizes those who use formal constrictions to achieve narrative success. This is true regardless of whether the content of a Vine is scripted, rehearsed, and filmed or simply captured by chance. The loop, for one, adds a layer of complexity that we don’t get in, say, YouTube videos. As we know, some Vines become funnier as they loop, while others reveal details and careful orchestrations of narrative. This, taken in consideration with the assertion that “…to make new media is to enact new methods of composing that are specific to new forms” (Fulwiler and Middleton 43), makes me wonder what composing in the age of Vine (and in the age after Vine) might look like. How might looping and strict time limitations, as well as a careful balance between scripting and random capturing, influence the way we tell stories? 

Also—how might other everyday methods of digital storytelling affect the stories we tell and the stories we can imagine? (What, for example, might filters and stickers on Snapchat and Instagram add to storytelling? How might Periscope or going live on Instagram and Facebook affect what we choose to capture digitally?) And, finally, what do these new media mean for our pedagogies?

And, just because, my favorite Vine: