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