Storytelling in the Digital AgeKatie Elson Anderson, Rutgers

PCA/ACA April 2, 2010

Loss of the Art of Storytelling?

“Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly” – Walter Benjamin, 1968

Is technology taking away from the storytelling experience?

Are oral traditions and traditional storytelling being destroyed?

Storytelling:

Is the act of communicating an event, or sequence of events to an audience using words and/or physical movement.

uses words, uses actions, is interactive, presents a story, encourages the active imagination of the listeners. –National Storytelling Network

Explain, educate, enlighten

Pass on historical, cultural, and moral information

Provide escape and relief from struggle to survive

William Bascom’s “Four Functions of Folklore”:• Provide escape from reality• Validate one’s culture• Educate• Maintain Conformity

History

Emerged from:•A need to share experience with others•A need to provide entertainment•A need for form and beauty•A need to record history and social norms

-PellowskiEveryone a storyteller.

Used Technologies available: songs, chants, words, gestures, chants, drawings, pictures

Specialists honed their skills: bards, minstrels, ashiks, griots

From Oral to Written

1919 Grimm Brothers- Kinder und Hausmaerchen

Oral replaced by literary or enhanced? Evidence that literary traditions are influenced by oral traditions. Jack Zipes, 1994

Wider audience

Reading aloud vs. storytelling

Increased SharingTraditional:Legend- HistoryMyth- SpiritualFairy Tale- Magical

Non-Traditional:Urban LegendsPersonal Narrative

Libraries and Museums

1899- Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh: One of theearliest examples of regular story-hours.

Children’s Librarians trained in Storytelling at Carnegie Library and Pratt Institute

Museum Story Hours:Boston Museum of Fine Arts:1911Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1917

Decline in the 60’s of traditional story hours, replaced with reading out loud. Staffing? or Technology?

Technology

Storytelling changes with each new technology available.

Audio:Tape RecordersRadioPodcastingRecapturing Oral TraditionWider AudienceMore exposureStoryCorps

Visual:PictographsDrawingsVisual StoriesPhotosharing: Flickr

Video:Digital Storytelling: Center for Digital StorytellingEducationMarketingYouTube

Twitter Twovel

Facebook Novel

Multi-User Gaming

Storytelling is a social event. Social Technology is storytelling.

YouTube

Storytelling is Sharing

Comments, Conversation, Communication

Engaging, Emotional, Educational

Experience vs Witness

Everyone can tell a story.

The Universe of Storytelling:Sharing

CollaborationDemocratization

References

Anderson, Katie E. (2010) “Storytelling”. 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook, edited by H. James Birx. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (forthcoming).

Bascom, W. (1965b). Four Functions of Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore, 67(266), 333-349.

Benjamin, W. (1968) The Storyteller. In Arendt, H. (ed) Illuminations (pp.83-109). New York: Schocken Books.

Fields, A. & Diaz, K. (2008). Fostering Community through Digital Storytelling: A Guide for Academic Librarians. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2008.

Pellowski, A. (1990). The world of storytelling. Bronx, NY: H.W. Wilson.

Zipes, J. (1994). Fairy tale as myth. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Images

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crackdog/39179619822.0

http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/1302139/Storytelling