Alexander, Bryan. The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media--Revised and Updated Edition, 2nd Edition. vol. Revised and updated edition, Praeger, 2017

Notes under cut

ch02
In that environment, the last decade of the Cold War, we see the rise of
hypertext fiction based on such technologies as Apple’s Hypercard (1987)
and Eastgate Systems’ Storyspace.2 Hypertexts consisted of two elements:
content items and their connections. Multiple readable chunks, or lexia,
are positioned on a computer screen: “documents of any kind (images, text,
charts, tables, video clips) . . . scrolling ‘pages’ (as they are on the World
Wide Web) or screen-size ‘cards’ (as they are in a Hypercard stack).”3 Readers
(or users) traveled hyperlinks among lexia to experience (or develop)
stories....

How do hypertexts work as digital stories? Users—readers— experience hypertext as an unusual storytelling platform. We navigate along lexia, picking and choosing links to follow. As with reading a novel, we assemble the story in our minds. Unlike a novel, we have no single, linear direction to follow. Instead, reading a hypertext is something like a hybrid of exploring a space (think: museum, park, city), solving puzzles (which path will be productive?), and reading an opera libretto or closet drama (staging it mentally).

18

chapter four talks about social media storytelling, through blogs, twitter, email etc


chapter nine - mobile devices: the birth of new designs for small screens

Mobile devices may become the ultimate digital storytelling device. So
far, we have addressed stories built and consumed on a variety of devices,
including laptops, game consoles, and desktop computers. For this chapter,
we focus on the most popular computing platform in the world—the
mobile phone—and other related devices.
The mobile phone is a global computing platform used across all nations,
languages, and ages.
143

Defining the mobile world requires revisiting some classic frameworks.
To begin with, mobile is a popular, if ultimately unclear term. Strictly speaking,
it should describe both connected and unconnected devices, such as
cell phones and mp3 players. Increasingly we assume mobile to mean “also
wirelessly connected,” and rely on portable for “not usually connected.”
Wireless itself is a curious term, a negative one, stating what it is not rather
than what it is, like atheist or postmodern. After all, wireless simply means
not using a wired connection, which can describe a PlayStation Portable
without its radio on or an old Discman. Wireless really denotes a radio connection,
but radio is a term usually omitted from discussions.

144

In such an environment, how do we tell stories?
If we consider a classic mobile phone, with its small screen and keyboard, we might determine that mobile storytelling has a shrunken, if not dim world of possibilities. “We cannot do much with such a keyboard,” runs the intuitive response, “nor see more than a little through that screen.” The reality, however, is quite the opposite. Every major topic we have addressed so far in this book—social media, gaming, the framework of digital storytelling—becomes accelerated, amplified, and somewhat mutated by the onset of ubiquitous computing.
The amount of content we generate and consume is accelerated by the presence of mobile phones. The devices represent an additional point of Internet contact for those with access to laptops and desktops, and they allow first-time connectivity for those without. This means more opportunities
to contribute content to the social Web through taking and uploading
145

photos, audio, or video; commenting on or editing sites; writing posts;
and updating status through Twitter or Facebook. The social Web is amplified
by adding physical information through various means, including social service check-ins, geocoding captured photos and video. The reverse is also true, as connected participants can bring social media content into formerly offline social events. Political meetings, classrooms, and medical
clinics are not the same now that those present can hit the Web for fact checking or peer support.


Interestingly, these stories may change tempo, given the different creative flexibility the mobile phone offers over print: “Packard is particularly excited about ‘very fast-paced segments,’ which would have taken up too much space in a printed book. ‘There’s no such problem in cyberland, and
we take advantage of that.’ ”7
146

Beyond these mutated story forms, mobile phones also increase the number of opportunities for us to view, read, or listen to traditional forms, be they Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)-style videos, Flickr image sequences, podcasts, or text. Joseph Esposito suggests a different form of storytelling may surface via mobile phones during a certain kind of reader’s time

spent waiting for a plane, a doctor, or for a meeting to begin. That’s a huge
number of minutes in any day; a good portion of our lives is wasted while
we are waiting for the main course to arrive. . . . How about the 10-minute
crack? Five minutes? Think of your own day: How often are you simply
waiting, doing nothing?

Esposito calls this “interstitial writing” and explores its possible form in some detail. How to organize the kind of material readable in such microbursts of time? Not long, sustained stories:

More likely short items will be strung together in an anthology; the thesis
of the anthology (“brief bursts about the new administration”; “101 short
poems about transistors and current”) will suffuse each item with a sense
of being part of a whole.

147


chapter 14: communities, resources and challenges

ch 16 toward the next wave of digital storytelling

Furthermore, a too positive overly rosy impression leaves storytelling open to charges of naivete or misdirection. As David Snowden points out, stories manipulate audiences, which isn’t necessarily a  good or ethical thing. He goes on to recommend: “If you are going to teach storytelling . . .
then honesty is the best policy. Realise that you are teaching a manipulative technique, agree [on] the grounds rules, discuss the ethics with your client.”5
Moreover, a single story can be compelling enough to drive out other alternative stories and voices, as Chimamanda Adichie points out. As listeners, we can be powerfully shaped by stories as children, as people seeking growth and identification; successful stories can soak up those desires—which
is not necessarily a good thing. 6 The way some digital storytelling platforms are acculturated as children’s items, such as some games and comics, is germane here.
236

Storytelling consumption through mobiles is already widespread, as is
media capture. But storytelling creation is shifting to mobile devices as
well, as media capture, editing, and sharing tools increase in accessibility
and power