What Makes A Great Story?: A Model for Storytellers
A note on this publication. This is an excerpt from my PhD dissertation, “‘What makes a great story?’: Multidisciplinary and International Perspectives On Digital Stories By Youth Formerly In Foster Care In Canada” (April 2022). I chose to share the results of this research here so that it has an impact on a wide, and general audience. If you would like to write or publish about this work, please use the following citation:
Ludlow, B. (2022). “What makes a great story?”: Multidisciplinary and International Perspectives On Digital Stories By Youth Formerly In Foster Care In Canada. [Doctoral dissertation, York University]. Electronic Theses & Dissertations. http://hdl.handle.net/10315/40688
Youth Speak Out! digital storytelling workshops
In the Youth Speak Out! digital storytelling workshops in partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the Adoption Council of Canada (ACC), youth were invited to tell their stories about being in care so that potential foster and adoptive parents, along with members of the child welfare and legal systems, could begin to understand what it is like to be in care. As an adoptee, witnessing the youth create and share their stories about adoption and foster care was enlightening, as they had so much to share and the confidence to recognize the similarities in and across each other’s stories. Fiddian-Green et al., (2019) were one of the first research groups to unpack the impact of digital storytelling on storytellers and noted that an increase in self-efficacy and mastery of skill were the key drivers of transformative change through the digital storytelling process. The purpose of the workshops was for the youth to develop their own digital stories and other materials for advocacy that could be leveraged to generate social change. In all, 25 workshops took place across Canada, and over 200 digital stories were created (HeART Lab, 2020). Dr. Allison Crawford, Director of Virtual Care and Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is the project lead and invited me to co-facilitate three workshops.
After co-facilitating three workshops, I was left with many questions about who should see which stories and why. Through a discussion with my supervisory team, Dr. Sarah Flicker, and Dr. Allison Crawford, we came up with the research question, “What makes a great story?” This became the central query that I investigated.
Research Question and Purpose
In this study, I took up the opportunity to not only address the question, “What makes a great digital story?” but also delved into “What makes a great story?” to respond to this gap in the research. But how great is great?
In 1978, Bertram stressed the importance of being “cautious” when talking about good stories because “a criterion of goodness may tend to support mediocrity” (1978, p. 461). Attempts to measure stories by how good they are may also be reductive and may not capture the essential qualities of stories. A few authors have written about “What makes a good story?” and some of them have used children’s stories as example cases (Bertram, 1978; McCabe, et al., 1984; Velleman, 2003; Baron & Bluck, 2011; Gubrium, 2015; O’Hara, 2017; and Hu et al., 2020). These studies reflect on how children’s stories are written, structured, and employ common genres. The findings of their work include discussion about character development, story structure (Bertram, 1978; McCabe et al., 1984; Baron & Bluck, 2011; Gubrium, 2015), and plot development (Bertram, 1978; Velleman, 2003; Baron & Bluck, 2011). Baron and Bluck (2011, p. 113) developed a Perceived Story Quality Index, which is a preliminary statistical tool that examines “…the relation between perceived story quality and the extent to which memory sharing serves psychosocial functions.” The key difference between these studies and this dissertation is that the objectives of these studies were to find out about the perceptions of “What makes a good story?” for a general audience. By contrast, my dissertation involved an in-depth analysis about the perceptions of “What makes a great story?” for specific groupings of viewers.
In October 2018, YouGov completed a study to find out more about British citizens’ sentiments on the question, “How good is good?” They “showed respondents a selection of adjectives from a list of 24 and asked them to score each on a scale from 0–10, with 0 being “very negative” and 10 being “very positive”” (Smith, 2018, para. 6). According to YouGov (Smith, 2018), “great” (average score= 7.76/10) is ranked higher on average than the word “good” (average score=6.92/10): a difference of 0.84 points (Smith, 2018).
When I first read the chart by YouGov (Smith, 2018), I thought about the impact of words on my feelings. I realized that I was thinking about and saying many of the lower ranked words that YouGov (Smith, 2018) reported on, rather than words or phrases like “very good,” or “brilliant.” When reflecting on the research question in my dissertation study, I was curious to hear what participants genuinely thought about the stories and I wanted to frame my question in a positive way. This was especially important to me given the difficult topic showcased in the stories that I was going to present to participants about experiences of aging out of foster care.
The focus and intention of this research was to understand how people working in multidisciplinary fields understand “What makes a great story?” along with their perceptions of the impact and value of digital storytelling. To discover the answer to this question, I reached out to 82 individuals and organizations. I was ultimately able to connect with and interview 35 participants in 11 countries over Skype. To complete my study I used a qualitative video elicitation method alongside semi-structured interviewing, and naturalistic observation techniques.
What is ‘digital storytelling’?
Digital storytelling combines digital production techniques and methods that are often artful. Storytelling about personal lived experiences is usually done with the objective of sharing the story for other people to learn from, and relate to (Fiddian-Green et al., 2019). Digital stories are often created with video cameras, but can be created with any digital tool, such as a cellphone camera (MacEntee, Burkholder, & Schwab-Cartas, 2016), or they can be designed as an interactive website (Klamma, et al., 2009), or as an augmented reality digital story (Widiaty, et al., 2018), and so forth. Workshops to facilitate their creation usually last three to five days. Storytellers are guided through specific stages to share, write, produce, edit, and screen (present) their stories at the end of a workshop (Fiddian-Green et al., 2019; Lambert & Hessler, 2018).
Dayna Winslow Atchley III, also known as, “Ace (the Colorado Spaceman)” (Pink, 1998, para 8) was a digital media artist and pioneer of digital storytelling who combined “…QuickTime, Adobe Premiere, and Macromedia Director (and) devised a system that allows him to tell stories through film, video, music, and photography” (Pink, 1998, para 8). In 1994, Dayna joined forces with director and producer Joe Lambert to create the StoryCenter at the University of Berkeley, California (Lambert, 2013). It is likely that many other people around the world were exploring the same technologies in similar ways at the same time. Yet, Atchley III and Lambert took this exploratory method a step further to teach people how to create and share their stories with their method called “digital storytelling.” Like other video production methods such as documentary practice, digital storytelling involves a “democratizing mechanism” (Lambert, 2013, p. 43) that can evoke a transformative experience for participants and viewers alike (de Jager, et al., 2017). Some digital storytelling workshops focus on advocacy. In these situations, the resulting digital stories can be shared to influence public policy decision-makers.
Prior to the formalization of the digital storytelling method by Atchley III and Lambert in 1993, there was a long history that led up to the practice of creating stories with technology and digital materials. Artists have used film to tell stories since Thomas Edison and his assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, developed a camera called the “Kinetograph” in 1890 (Rush, 2005, p. 15). With this machine, filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein created stories with multilayered narratives by physically overlapping two film negatives (Rush, 2005). It is important to recognize this historical perspective for storytellers, audiences, facilitators, and researchers to understand how the arts made it possible for digital storytelling to be what it is today.
Though digital storytelling can be regarded as a personal expression with video, today the number of personal expressions on digital video are overwhelming, with video on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The latter two facilitate the creation of “personal stories” that are arguably inspired by the work of Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman who were the first video artists in the 1970s — 1980s to face the camera at close proximity (Rush, 2005). The abundance of digital media at our fingertips is alarming and of great concern for those with addictive tendencies. It is affecting some of the most vulnerable individuals, specifically young girls (Hansson, et al., 2012). Governments are rightfully uniting against the use of hateful live documentation of violent acts on social media.
In complement with representation of self, a core interest that arts-based storytellers and digital storytellers have is about the place of their individual story (Lambert & Hessler, 2018). Often stories are filled with discussions on what individuals have accomplished, or, in contrast, what they have lost in life. Though it is significant to know what people do, Frank (2011) states, “…what makes a good story is how the artfulness of the telling elaborates some truth…” and “…(W)hat makes a truthful story is its refusal of elaboration” (2012, Loc. 2011). I think that the process of storytelling — and digital storytelling — reveals more detail about who the storyteller is and their association with place. It is not necessarily the whole truth about the person that emerges in one digital story; rather, the method of digital storytelling draws out a transparency of personhood that is specific to the method (Fiddian-Green et al., 2019). It is vital that people create and share many stories about their experiences across their lifetime. In fact, it is dangerous to tell one story about oneself, and especially about another individual, or group. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stated in her 2009 TED speech, a single story occurs when you, “…show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” Single stories are powerful in often disempowering ways, and they generate stereotypical perspectives that are limiting (Adichie, 2009). As Adichie (2009) stated at the end of her speech,
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
A single digital story is not the final digital story that one will create.
Methods
This qualitative study involved 34 video elicitation semi-structured interviews, conducted via videoconferencing (Skype) with 35 key informants working in the arts, healthcare, social services, and digital storytelling facilitation sectors. Participants are from 11 different countries. Each interview began with a video elicitation screening where three digital stories created by youth who “aged out” of foster care were shared. Each of the digital stories used as part of this elicitation were created by youth as part of a workshop series held by the ACC in locations across Canada prior to the onset of my study. Following the screening, I interviewed participants with a semi-structured interview guide that I co-designed with my supervisor, to gauge participants’ responses to and perspectives on the digital stories. Two methodological frameworks were applied to the data collection and analysis: Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) (Charmaz, 2006, 2014) and critical arts-based inquiry (CABI) (Finley, 2017).
Video Elicitation Method
Video elicitation is a method of data collection like photo elicitation, which aims to elicit an in-depth response from a participant after they watch a video (Rose, 2016; Lorenz, 2011; Harper, 2003; and Collier, 1957). Rose (2016) notes that video elicitation is “deployed with the aim of generating evidence about the ways in which social positions and relations are both produced by and produce distinct…experiences (sic)” (p. 308). Photo elicitation and video elicitation are methods that are designed to encourage participants to interpret a visual medium.
A “projective technique” (Sayre, 2001, p. 2), video elicitation participants view a video and then discuss it with a researcher. During the process of video elicitation, participants interpret the content and express what they see, hear, and sense in the video (Henry & Fetters, 2012). Video elicitation is an effective method for working with an interdisciplinary population that may include “reluctant subjects” (Sayre, 2001, p. 4) who:
…simply feel uncomfortable disclosing information that might damage their self-esteem or compromise their privacy. People who feel they have something to lose by sharing information also fall into this category. Or they may simply not trust the interviewer. (Sayre, 2011, p. 4).
Sayre (2001) and colleague developed a video elicitation technique in response to the need to tell stories while maintaining participant privacy when responding to politically tenuous issues. Henry and Fetters (2012) identified 13 studies involving video and audio elicitation before the Sayre (2001) report. Arborelius (1990, as cited by Henry & Fetters, 2012, p. 119) completed one of the first studies with video elicitation with physicians and O’Brien et al., (2008, as cited by Henry & Fetters, 2012, p. 119) were the first group to use video elicitation with patient participants.
The three digital story videos that I shared with participants in this study are between two to four and a half minutes each. Once participants were ready to proceed with the interview, I shared the videos through an encrypted “channel” folder on Vimeo.com. While this platform allowed participants ease of use, such as to play and pause the videos during our interviews, it also allowed me to maintain the security of the videos. The password for each story was changed immediately after each interview so participants could not access the videos after the interview. Participants also were not able to download the videos from the Vimeo website.
To build on the video elicitation method, I included a semi-structured interview guide with a set of 14 questions, including my research question. By pausing to ask about each digital story, I also had time to ask if participants were comfortable with proceeding to watch the remaining digital stories and to check in with them about how they were feeling after watching them.
Semi-Structured Interview Method
Following the video elicitation of each story, the remainder of each interview was focused on asking participants “What makes a great story?” along with questions about the participant’s experience of viewing the stories, what they liked or disliked, what they learned, the aesthetics and methods employed by the youth, and their perceptions of the stories told by youth formerly in foster care.
During the interviews, it was essential to record notes of my interactions with participants. At the start of my dissertation, I documented my ideas, mind mapped my research question, and created concept maps of my study design in a wire bound sketchbook. Field notes and observations about the format, process, and content during the interviews aided in producing in-depth written and visual memos that aligned with what participants shared with me during the analysis (O’Connor, et al., 2018; Charmaz, 2003). During, and immediately after each interview, I took note of repeated words and phrases and body language patterns that were significant so I could reflect and compare these notes with my codes and theoretical sample.
Results
The core findings of this dissertation illuminate criteria for creating a great story. Following the focused coding stage (Charmaz, 2006, 2014; Rieger, 2018) four themes were identified during the analysis. Together, they comprise the structure of an emerging grounded theory that responds to the question, “What makes a great (digital) story?”:
1. Anticipation: Great digital stories convey evidence of forethought by the storyteller about the impact and value of the story with the audience.
2. Actualization: Clear and aesthetically pleasing visuals and sounds form the foundation of great digital stories.
3. Affect: In response to hearing or viewing great digital stories, an audience feels a range of emotions that can compel them to change their outlook about a situation.
4. Authenticity: Great digital stories are authentic and honest, and they involve the sharing of personal experiences.
Anticipation
Great stories convey evidence of forethought about the impact and value of the story with the audience.
A recurrent theme in the interviews was a sense amongst interviewees that the storyteller attended to the storytelling production process. Interviewees felt that to make great stories, people need a reason to create them in the first place. Given this finding, I believe that there is an important and under-studied stage of the digital storytelling production process which I call the “anticipation” stage.
The Cambridge English Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2020) defines forethought as “the good judgment to consider the near future in your present actions”. In this stage, participants critically consider the potential impact and value of their story for a specific audience. Storytellers also reflect on how and if the story should be shared, and the potential of their story to create social change.
The initial “Own your insight” stage, as Joe (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, USA) said, is
…more of an organizing principle than it is an assessment principle, meaning… really, in the end, did you feel like it helped you to do this story?
Insight provides clarity about the voice of the story (Lambert & Hessler, 2018), and, critically, as digital storytelling facilitators Barrie (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, UK) and Joe noted, insight can be bidirectional for facilitators, who observe and listen to storytellers. For example, Barrie said:
Yes, I think it gave me an insight into how people really feel; something that is probably not quantified in statistics, such as: this many people went into care, these people left and found somewhere to live, these people left and went into a life of crime, these people left and ended up addicted to drugs or alcohol, and whatever – that doesn’t tell the story.
In contrast to insight, the definition of a similar word, “foresight” is “the ability to judge correctly what is going to happen in the future and plan your actions based on this knowledge” (Cambridge University Press, 2020). It is a form of future-casting to have foresight while developing a story. An insight-driven approach to story development does not necessarily mean that a foresight driven (predictive process) will follow. Many domains benefit from predictive storytelling or future forecasting, for example, a story about the effect of our actions today on climate change. In digital storytelling, there is the potential for facilitators to invite participants to explore a preliminary stage of story production called “anticipation” that forms a bridge between the initial stage of insight (Lambert & Hessler, 2018) with hindsight-based stories that diverge from honest portrayals of everyday life – the result of producing “too many unconsidered narratives” as Daniel (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, UK) noted.
In this section, I distinguish the stage that I call “anticipation” with the first of six of the “Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling,” “Owning your insights” described by Lambert and Hessler (2018). As Lambert and Hessler (2018) state, the first stage, “Owning your insights” (Lambert & Hessler, 2018, p. 68) is about “clarifying your story’s insight…” and in particular,
Insight is related to many other questions that can arise for the storyteller. Even if you address the core insight and unique voice for the story, you may still feel you need to shape the story for a specific audience, or a specific purpose. You may also feel the story may need more context to be understood. (p. 55).
The purpose of including a new stage in the digital storytelling creation process called “anticipation” that precedes the stage, “Owning your Insight” (Lambert & Hessler, 2018), is that participants – specifically digital storytelling facilitators – spoke to the need to encourage storytellers to think about the impact of their story in the future, and to nurture thought about the value and impact of the story on a specific audience, rather than trying to predict what the process and outcome will be like at some point in the early stages of the workshop (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Impact
Joe responded to the differences in writing for digital storytelling and how the stories in this collection that I shared with him fit with narrative and testimonial writing, given that they have a sort of broad storyline. Joe said,
I mean, you’ve been in my workshops, you know, even with these young people, we would have said, well, “what does that really look like?”
As a facilitator, asking questions during the writing stage, story circle, and after listening to the story can help storytellers present the story that they wish to tell, and more importantly in my opinion, the story that they are willing to share.
As a facilitator with experience in working with youth in foster care, Jacqueline (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, USA) spoke about the choices participants make when storytelling. I asked her about recognizing the sense of self-compassion in Jon’s story:
JACQUELINE: I think sometimes not knowing, like having that just like, how they’d chosen to share I think can be a really great tool for empathy because it leaves you curious, and knowing that it was really serious, but not having to know the nitty-gritty details of their trauma.
BRYN: That’s true, I’ve been thinking about empathy in relation to these videos and it’s definitely the first emotional response to the videos.
JACQUELINE: I think that’s something I’ve noticed too is that you know that they’ve experienced trauma, but there’s still that longing for their family. They still often… they’re very protective of their family, even if their family has hurt them intentionally or unintentionally… like they’re having a balance like, “this was bad, but I love these people or I still long for like a reconciliation” and like you see that kind of I think in these as well this kind of. …You see this protection of your family.
BRYN: Yeah, it’s not like you just forget about your birth parents or, or even if you’ve had multiple foster homes. You see different adult figures and they don’t forget about them, but they don’t make them the centre of their stories.
JACQUELINE: Yeah, I think all of them centre themselves in their story for sure, which is great.
As Jacqueline stated, participants may be interested to create a story about a difficult personal experience, often from the past, but they may not fully appreciate how the process of creation (and possibly sharing) might impact themselves and others in the workshop. As a facilitator, Jacqueline talked about noticing when youth have experienced trauma, and not having to “know the nitty-gritty details”; I related to this experience, and it was refreshing to hear another digital storytelling facilitator speak about the need to have this professional boundary, given that we are not trained in trauma therapy. At the same time, we both identified the strengths and resiliency that youth in care have while creating their stories that are often about traumatic memories.
Following this exchange, we talked about the concern we shared with balancing facilitator influence while monitoring workshop participant’s affect and interest to share difficult stories when we might not be equipped as facilitators to support them, and Jacqueline said:
Yeah, yeah, there [isn’t?] anything wrong asking about the past but we never do because we’re working with students and we’re not equipped to like, we’re not trying… this is not therapy, you know, like we’re not trying to like trigger anything.
Jacqueline’s interest in delineating digital storytelling from therapy was important to convey to participants so that they could both understand the limits of the facilitation team and the goals of dissemination. It is notable that these findings highlight how the need to assist participants with containing the difficult stories may prevent a digital storyteller from telling their authentic story.
Similarly, Joe’s response resonated with the tensions that Jacqueline described about facilitator influence. Joe was curious to know how the storytellers created the stories and what role facilitators played. He asked,
How are you influencing the choices and, and what happens when you give the influence in a certain way to the, the, the tightness of the film?
He went on to say,
But that’s – a lot of our work is that, you know, always kind of like help the person get it, just so.
As an organizing principle, gathering the storyteller’s insights into what story they need to tell is worthwhile. However, some storytellers might not be able to form “a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation,” as the definition of insight says (Cambridge Dictionary, 2020). When a storyteller is clear about who their audience is, it is often easier to let go during the process, enjoy the challenges of creative work, and have fun. For example, as Daniel stated:
…the third part of what makes a good story would be that the person making it in is in one way or another enjoys the creative process. I think enjoying the creative process is a really important part of it being fun. …I always want people to have fun. I don’t mean to be silly and run about but have the kind of fun that comes from really throwing yourself into the problems of making something.
Similarly, as Jeff (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, USA) said,
There’s structure and it is an immersive activity. Um that kids also could have a sense of pride in something they created, they have ownership over. That’s a good confidence builder, too. So, I think there’s a lot of upside potential for digital storytelling.
These “upside potentials” of digital storytelling, and storytelling, are not constructed as Joe noted:
What do I think makes a great story? You know, and this is why you hear me almost analyzing the process more than the product. And seeing the way they were constructed. And I’m seeing the comfort in which the, the storytellers felt on camera as well as in their voice.
…in her voice, there’s some degree of confidence. Yeah. I mean, I would be curious how they felt about the screening. Usually, people just can’t stand the screening, meaning of their own peace. They’re just like, no, don’t show me that. But you know, usually after it’s over there, you know, they’re like, you see him in there like, “I’m a filmmaker, you know?” I mean, you know, they, they have some degree of pride of authorship and that, that’s cool.
This “pride of authorship” that Joe is taking about can result from going through the creative process to make a digital story, seeing the final product, sharing it at a screening, and seeing its impact on others. In my experience, on the first day of the workshops during the introductions, many youth storytellers stated their excitement with having the opportunity to “make a movie”. To me, this comment conveyed that they were interested in working with facilitators and their peers to produce their story. As movies are experienced socially, they were already anticipating the experience of sharing and observing other people watch and listen to their movie.
Daniel shared a story about how they used to screen stories, which reminded me of the story screenings that I observed with the youth at the workshops I attended:
…we used to get people on the last day which was usually a Friday. Yeah. We have a screening at about four o’clock…. People’s families – brothers and sisters, moms, dads, all come and watch the film. You’ve maybe had 10 people in the workshop, but now you suddenly got 40 people in the room watching the films. Yeah, we used to serve… yeah, orange juice, or there was always a bottle of cheap fizzy wine there if you wanted to have what was it called, you know you put champagne into orange juice. Then we’d have things to eat and stuff and have a proper screening and people would stand up and talk about their film and show it and answer questions and yeah, and it was always the best part, you know. Nobody wanted to leave… A very very important part is the sort of community thing.
The screenings were impactful for the storytellers and as Daniel noted, for their friends and family who came to see and hear their stories for the first time, in some cases.
Value
The confidence that is expressed in a digital story results from a thought about “What is valuable to an audience, and how will my story impact them?” as Robert (Healthcare Professional, Canada) said:
So, there are different kinds of value, right. I think the clearest kind of value is that these are valuable for the person that makes the story. Right, that this is an expression of themselves and trying to convey something that’s important to them in a way that’s coherent enough that somebody else is going to get it. At the same time that they’re kind of exercising their creativity like those are… that’s that’s a very important like that’s… that’s therapy, right? That’s their very important kind of impact. So, so for the person who is making it for sure.
After thinking about the value of the story on an audience, as Robert said, the combination of authentic self-expression and creativity can also be therapeutic for a storyteller.
Karl (Arts and Health Researcher, UK) felt strongly that it is important for youth to continue to create, share, and engage with other people’s stories. He noted that with so many issues of mistrust in the media, misinformation, and disinformation, there is a hesitancy to share real stories. He said,
I think telling your story and, and sharing your story with other people (is important) because you can then start to question other people’s stories.
However, Karl felt that it was important for youth to share their stories so that they would have the agency to critique other stories. When youth can create and share their stories and critique stories by others, they express and demonstrate the agency that they have, and they become leaders who can create and influence social change.
Pam (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, South Africa) and I talked about how important it is for child welfare workers to see stories created by youth in care and youth formally in care:
PAM: So again, it is nice watching the way other people deal with that constraint as facilitators. And also again, it was interesting to see how powerful I thought the stories could be as feedback from people in the system to the people running the system.
BRYN: Do you mean, for people running the system to watch these, yeah?
PAM: Yeah, social workers should watch these stories.
BRYN: I showed them to a few.
PAM: And how did they respond?
BRYN: I think… I think shock… and a sense of guilt in a way.
PAM: Huh…interesting.
BRYN: Yeah, but they also have a job to do, right?
PAM: Yeah, they do have a job to do. I guess what is so valuable about it is it makes the cases back into people.
BRYN: Yeah, that’s the primary thing.
The act of creating stories that convey a sense of self expression and creativity in a coherent way for an audience involves anticipation about how to go about that in an original way.
As Robert stated, it can be therapeutic to do this, or cathartic. Then, “owning one’s insights” (Lambert & Hessler, 2018) by presenting a story that is clear, personal, and understandable will launch a storyteller into the process of developing, presenting, and sharing a potentially authentic, honest, and emotionally compelling story; a story that may compel an audience to change their outlook.
Actualization
Clear and aesthetically pleasing visuals and sounds form great stories.
From their experiences of watching stories on television, in the theatre, or online, many participants understand that great stories are clear and understandable, and they include aesthetically pleasing visuals and sounds that complement each other.
Clarity
As a social worker, Malaika (Social Services Professional, USA) spoke to the gaps in care, and subsequent gaps in the stories that the youth shared in this study. The experience of viewing the stories and noticing these gaps was worrisome and troubling for Malaika, as she was often left wanting to know more about the youth’s stories and the reasons why the youth were in the situations that they were in. Malaika’s contributions to the study are invaluable in this regard, as I came to the workshops as a co-facilitator with minimal experience of working with vulnerable youth. She offered a lot of interesting questions, talked about the stories and how the youth felt using many narrative-style examples, and she shared new information with me about the current state of foster care in the US. Our discussion about the need for authentic, unpolished stories revealed a gap in my research about the production of unrealistic stories about – not with – youth in care, and youth formally in care.
In this excerpt, Malaika stresses the importance of focusing on one theme so that the story is clear. Her response was always focused on the youth perspective, and the need to know exactly what the youth need. Gradually, Malaika shared ideas for techniques that the youth and other digital storytellers can use to convey these needs with clarity, and here is one example:
MALAIKA: I think what makes a great or compelling story is finding one theme and going with the theme. Because you know if you go with the theme and you have these short blurbs of you know 2–4 minutes, I’d say you know, talk about the one thing. You know, maybe that’s why I liked Jon’s because he was like you know, “I had this abuse in my family, I got dropped off at the hospital”, it was you know tighter. With Brigitte’s story, … I don’t think I found anything out about her. It was just you know, “You can put the pieces together, you can find them, you can figure it out” and then Robyn’s story seemed to me like a little, also a little unclear. So maybe, I guess maybe I like stories that seem to have a resolution. Yeah, because even if it’s only a small piece, being able to tell a story that gives some form of resolution, or some place to kind of look forward to. So, I would say that is what makes a good story.
BRYN: Yeah, and it has to be a clear story?
MALAIKA: Yeah, I think so. Because otherwise it becomes… “I guess I’m not sure what you’re talking about…” you know what I mean, yeah. Make it clear and just say…yeah, one thing, and if there is more than one theme, make sure there is room to explain the different pieces.
Malaika emphasizes the need to tell clear stories a few times in this discussion and by doing so, she realizes that the stories that she finds the most compelling “…have a resolution” as she said. Some of her responses in the excerpt above may seem direct. But, by thinking about the synopses of the stories, Malaika demonstrated how to get to the root of the meaning in the stories. Once she described the stories, it was also evident to me that closure and a resolution in a story can make it clear enough to know about the core issues and how they can be addressed one-by-one if that was the storyteller’s objective.
Another attribute of clarity is when the visuals and audio components are unified. In response to the question about what was meaningful about his favourite story, Lewis (Fine Arts Professional, Canada) said that “the visuals matched the story very well.” For him, this matching provided narrative coherence. Similarly, while commenting on Brigitte’s story, Chloe (Arts and Health Researcher, Australia) stated:
I thought the way that her visuals and her narrative relate, you could see how there were ways that they were really relating, the words and visuals… it was a nice analogy between the two.”
Federica and Antonia (Digital Storytelling Facilitators, Italy) also spoke about the effect of unifying sounds, visuals, and the story without being didactic:
FEDERICA: It was really well thought out the way she was treating…let’s say the images together with the words and even though she um, she used a lot of the videos until to working through and then coming back and the music. I mean, it’s a really well well-done piece. Let’s say, and …but it’s more like thoughts… our thoughts going more than a story. This is the impression that I have.
The vacuous effect that Brigitte was able to convey by walking down the hallway symbolized that feeling and brought viewers like Federica into their thoughts. Antonia spoke about the adage to talk about a house in a story without showing a house, and to tell a relatable story with original content:
So, it all depends then maybe if you think about the digital story or a story, you know, like an oral story. So, if it’s digital, of course, good pictures should be used, and also, I think, not pictures taken from the internet like, I don’t know, little smiley faces and all that bad stuff and you know. And also, the language complements the image, and the other way around, you know, so that the images complement… are complementary to the language. So, they don’t… they don’t say the same thing. So, if I say house, don’t show a house, you know, so add a little something that you can relate to but not necessarily is a house, you know, it’s the feeling… the feeling that you are sharing.
Joe and Erica (Digital Storytelling Facilitators, Canada) spoke about the use of stock images in different ways. Erica felt that original images are more compelling, whereas Joe saw the use of stock images and video footage in Robyn’s and Jon’s story as an accessible way of sharing ideas.
ERICA: I especially liked the video of her (Robyn) walking in the path. I think that’s aesthetically quite appealing. I love that video. It’s a beautiful place. I found the icebergs a bit cheesy because they don’t look like images that they look like…like images that she got that…It’s like stock images.
BRYN: Yes.
ERICA: So, I mean, being a digital storytelling facilitator, I’m quite fussy about that and I don’t like it when people use stock images, but I appreciate that.
BRYN: Why not?
ERICA: Why not? Because I find it aesthetically unpleasing. I find it doesn’t match the story. It doesn’t look… it looks out of place, and it looks… but I know my opinions are super strong about it and they may not…I just might be biased but I would take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, but I understand that the metaphor was really important to her. So, I appreciate her use of it. I would have made… I would have encouraged different choices for her, aesthetically, but it doesn’t change the fact that the metaphor is really profound in the story and really important, and I get why she wanted to use it. So, I’m down. I’m down with it.
In contrast, Joe noted:
We don’t really critique cliché. I mean, I critique it less than anybody else, compared to my staff who are like, “Oh, but people will think we, you know, they’ll think we’re bad”. But I’ll say, “You know, if somebody uses a normative representation in a life that was never normative, there’s a kind of aspiration to it”.
So, when people use stock images and feel good about it, it’s because they want to feel like they’re normal, not because they, you know, not because they think it represents them and the sort of politics of representation, you know? And, um, what I liked about these pieces is that by choosing film and phew, you know, choosing a thing, like they exercise a…for example, Brigitte, where she’s piecing herself back together. Um, it gives you, uh, another way to look at the person. As a character onscreen in action as opposed to, you know, let me show you more pictures of a shadow. You know, like you can see in the shattered lives of my picture, broken up in Photoshop or my picture that, you know, the frame of my picture of broken clay. And, and you know how many times I’ve seen those metaphors. I, you know, find a nickel, I’d be a millionaire. So, and that that’s good. Meaning it’s good that you guys do that.
Daniel and I discussed why some people experience difficulty unifying images and sounds. He suggested:
[The task is difficult] because often our thoughts are confused… most people haven’t tried to shape their lives through storytelling because that’s not what we do. Um, one of the things about digital storytelling is, is that it helps you to do that. It helps you to teach you that storytelling is massively selective. You’ve… you’ve lived a whole life I could start, “I was born in 1952. My mother was… my dad was called Roddy, although she wasn’t really called Anna name was Kathleen, but she…” You know it’d be boring if you only see your life as that sort of narrative. But if you say, I don’t know, “Last week, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and that’s not… that’s not great. But it’s particularly bad for me because my mother had Multiple Sclerosis.” So, you’re coming at a story from a completely different place.
It is a skillful act by a storyteller working in tandem with a facilitator to seamlessly blend images with a compelling story.
Aesthetics
The way that storytellers can use images and sounds to tell great stories is through aesthetic strategies, and a few participants made observations about this. Interestingly, participants that talked about the importance of producing a polished final product did not share that they felt empathy while watching the stories. They might have felt empathetic, but they did not talk about it.
When creating stories, Jeff emphasized the importance of having a variety of shots or “b-roll” to select from, and said:
I like some of the aesthetic things they were doing in some of the camera work. I thought early on… the out of focus shots in the hall with her walking to and from the camera. It was good. I think a little goes a long way. I think for any future workshop they do, or they want to produce more than you make sure to shoot enough footage of different varieties, so you have a lot of visual options when you’re editing.
When storytellers have content to choose from, it may be more straightforward to decide what to omit. Likewise, they may record a sentence once, then repeat the same sentence but say it in a different way to add or omit emphasis. For example, when asking a question, but forgetting to modify the pitch of your voice before the end of the sentence.
Naturally, participants working in fine arts were drawn to responding to the power of visual media in storytelling. Marcus (Fine Arts Professional, Canada) and I had an interesting discussion about how Robyn, Jon, and Brigitte used digital and analogue media and editing techniques to illustrate themes in their stories about aging out of foster care:
BRYN: I’m interested particularly in what you said about images that are clear compared to pixelated images. So, by making that formal decision, like Brigitte’s decision, Jon was emphasizing that, can you say? It’s almost taking a technique, and using the image technique as a storytelling technique?
MARCUS: Yeah, exactly. I mean just like the, like kind of like thinking about the distorted image, like thinking about pixilation, um, any kind of like digital distortion, I think like he speaks well through the medium, like especially considering it’s a video, but like, through that kind of interaction with the medium itself, it also like really effectively talks about like what the medium, like what the medium is kind of like talking about. So, I think it’s kind of like a really natural, like link between, um, the kind of like pixelated distortion and like the mental distortion of like thinking of someone like close to you who you have a very like different perspective on after like, um, an experience that is potentially like traumatizing, or life-altering.
In this example, Marcus argues for the use of “digital distortion” techniques in video editing as it works effectively in his opinion, to illustrate a cognitive distortion, or an experience that is “…traumatizing or life-altering” as he says. Pam and Robert also talked about the blurred image in Jon’s video, and because the image of his grandparents is “very clear and bright” as I said, Pam responded,
Yes. Yes, exactly. So, there’s…I mean there’s a strong impression that the grandparents are still part of his life in some way. He does have that family.
In storytelling, dialogue and images often work in tandem to tell stories, and often images can stand alone in great stories as Susan (Arts and health researcher, Australia) identified in Robyn’s story:
SUSAN: Robyn used so very few words that told a powerful, impactful story. Her images were everything, you know. If you had just a blank screen and her telling that story without the path that she retraced without the moving water of the river connecting her, and…(pause)
BRYN: The falling iceberg…
SUSAN: And all of that… yeah. Yeah, without those images her story is, you know, less powerful or less true almost. It’s less her story without the images.
In the middle of Robyn’s story, an image of a falling iceberg works to convey the sense of dissolution of her family life. At the same time, the metaphor illustrates Robyn’s realization of this natural phenomenon with icebergs and unfortunately, the separation of families. Perhaps the iceberg also illustrates Robyn’s coming to terms with herself as an individual. As Susan notes, “…without those images her story is, you know, less powerful or less true…” The power of the falling iceberg, the honest portrayal of the naturally occurring event, and the use of this metaphor to illustrate a personal event that is hard to put into words, makes Robyn’s story feel authentic.
Karl connects the visual image and aesthetic decisions by Robyn to the emotional and affective response that Robyn was experiencing, and how that visual image works to illustrate the underlying concerns that Robyn was facing:
BRYN: What do you think she was trying to express?
KARL: I think she was expressing the sense of frustration of what happened to her and also that nobody really understood the real hurt. That was really very clear. The fact is an iceberg is 9/10ths below the water, and you can’t necessarily judge what’s going on on the surface. I also also… I like the visuals, you know sort of leaf pushing at the dead twig… that she was really alive. Nobody was treating her as a person, she was a thing. Especially when she got taken into care, nobody cared anyway. It was just being part of a process of being. I sort of sensed helplessness as well.
In this response, Karl is emphasizing the emotional and representational elements of Robyn’s story, as well as the macro perspective about foster care in general. With his awareness of his experiences of working with youth at risk of leaving care in the European Union, his response highlights how the system continues to leave youth feeling as if their experiences are meaningless.
Mary-Jo’s (Healthcare Professional, Canada) response to viewing the stories addresses the need to hear stories from youth formally in foster care. She noted that she “very much prefers the first-person experiential than anything else.” She goes on to say:
MARY-JO: It’s pretty damning for the foster care system in Canada, but it’s… but it’s… amazingly… it shows an amazing amount of resilience too.
BRYN: These videos in particular?
MARY-JO: Yeah. … Yeah. … Yeah.
BRYN: Maybe is it because of the perspective they had – the first-person?
MARY-JO: Well because it’s these kids who are the survivors. Yeah, unfortunately, you don’t have videos of the kids who aren’t… you know. There are kids who are on the street… a lot of kids and youth are on the street and from foster care. A lot of youth who are too heavy into drugs or other bad stuff can’t get anywhere near the people like you and others who are making videos to be part of it, right? Yeah, you had a good connection in order to get into being part of this.
BRYN: It’s true that… that some sort of support…
MARY-JO: (naturally interrupts) so, the ones that are missing you probably need to have like 10 videos of blackness to say… this represents the kids who are lost, like, who didn’t make it.
I paused for a while after Mary-Jo shared that idea, because if the stories were presented in that way, it would cause a very visceral and impactful reaction for an audience. I got chills as Mary-Jo said this because I did not think about that possibility. Her response came from her experience of knowing what it is like not to be able to share stories by “kids who are lost” and those “who didn’t make it”, as she said. I think if an audience experienced what it was like to see blank screens representing those who were lost or did not make it in the child welfare system, it would cause people to not only want to change the situation, but to bring others to the exhibit, including stakeholders responsible for implementation of child welfare policies.
Jacqueline noted the differences and similarities in aesthetic approaches to digital storytelling and photography, which is a medium that is frequently used in digital story production:
Jacqueline: So, you know, I think there’s a trade-off in like the aesthetics sometimes, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. But there is kind of that compared to say a photo essay. Of course, they’re still high quality photography and not but like to get there and to have the right tools to do it and stuff…
I think it depends on how much time you have. Often, we don’t have the time to do a proper lighting and really great editing techniques and things like that. So, you kind of sacrifice the aesthetics for the value of… the audio, the video, the moving images…
Many digital storytelling facilitators expressed concerns about time constraints in workshops, and Jacqueline’s point about balancing the aesthetics with the time constraints is significant as she felt, along with many other participants, that it is not as important to use advanced techniques to create stories as it is to create stories that are authentic and cause an emotional connection with the viewer.
Marcus injected his response with a discussion of the value of the merging of visual and written words in storytelling and in artistic reproductions:
MARCUS: There is like a dissonance between like this space of where the artwork exists physically, and then this kind of reproduction that we are given, to look at…. (there is a) kind of race between technology and the artist, the artist is always trying to find new ways to create artwork that is hard to reproduce, and technology is always like on their heels, so it creates this kind of cat and mouse game… video really is like the artwork and the reproduction in itself. Um, because it is like the digital, it exists digitally, purely in a lot of ways. So, I think that’s like really interesting to talk about because some artworks don’t inform the way they do in certain ways, or there is like this space where some artwork like really does need to be talked about in a sense of like using writing as a tool to convey an idea to really complement to the artwork itself.
BRYN: Yes, I understand.
MARCUS: Sometimes I look at art and I think, like, “What the hell?” (laughs). Like I just don’t know how to respond sometimes.
BRYN: Yes, it takes time to see it.
Later, Marcus and I talked about how in digital storytelling, participants will often scan analogue artifacts such as personal photographs to be used in a final digital story. As artists, we agreed that we don’t really think about the effect on our creative process of scanning analogue media for a digital piece, and this was stimulating, as an artist, to consider in the context of digital storytelling.
Echoing Marcus’ response, Susan highlighted that storytelling and specifically digital storytelling works to empower the storyteller (to use her words) “…in ways that …conventional qualitative methods don’t do”:
…I feel like this is a way of handing… (brief pause) …really handing control of the story to the story teller in ways that even even… even conventional qualitative methods don’t do. …You know, you’re handing over the… the control of the story and you know supporting somebody to. In a sense. The research is a way of… equipping somebody to tell that story. Yeah, so I know I just think you know, a lot of times these stories are not best told in words alone… Robyn used so very few words that told a powerful, impactful story. Where images were everything, you know, if you had just a blank screen and her telling that story without the path that she retraced without the moving water of the river connecting her…
In comparison to artists who do not engage with health and social science research, participants who I interviewed who are working in the arts and health emphasized their work in “equipping” and “providing” participants with methods and “tools” as Susan noted. Arts and health academics in this study, for example, Karl, Sarah, and Chloe, also talked a lot about relinquishing control and learning to observe how people choose to engage with the tools and techniques available to them.
Affect
In response to hearing or viewing great stories, an audience feels a range of emotions that can compel them to change their outlook about a situation.
According to participants, great stories cause an audience to feel specific emotions: hope, happiness, sadness, and surprise or shock. Participants often commented on their emotional responses to the stories and generally agreed that a great story can elicit a range of emotional responses. Those who tell great stories use purposeful expressions, technologies, and paralinguistic (body language) techniques to convey feelings. However, the nuances about the importance of specific emotions, for example: happiness in the affect of a protagonist, and the connection of that emotion to the audience’s sense of being compelled to act to change a situation, were serendipitously surprising to discover in the data.
When a small set of participants felt that they could act to change a situation, they expressed that they felt compassion. After watching the three digital stories participants often said that they wanted to watch more stories. When participants expressed a sense of curiosity and hope, they would often share stories about similar situations to express the empathy and sense of connection that they felt with the story and/or storyteller. Sometimes they would express that they saw themselves in the storyteller. Within this theme of affect are two subthemes: emotion and empathy.
Emotion
Erica spoke about how great stories will transport her to feel a range of emotions:
Oh and there’s actually one more really important element .. which is emotion, right? Emotion is what lets us connect across different… So I don’t know what it’s like to be you at all Bryn, but I know what it’s like to have hope, to have joy, to have fear, to have pain, to have disappointment, to have grief, to have loss, you know and have excitement. I know what all those things feel like and so if you can…take me to the place where I can feel those things. Then it will be a good story.
Here, Erica connects quality with emotional impact. When participants talked about the importance of emotion in storytelling, they described it in their personal connection with the stories and the kinds of emotional responses that an audience is expecting. Secondary emotional responses were identified by participants as feelings that resulted from being moved by protagonists’ circumstances, for example, the happiness one feels about a hopeful ending to a story (Karl), or the positively gripping sensation that one feels about a happy story (Barbara, Healthcare Professional, Canada).
The emotional connection that participants noted that they felt when hearing and/or viewing a story does involve a sense of relatability. For example, Pam shared the common responses that participants in her workshops say when she asks about the effect of good stories:
Yeah, when I ask people, often in the in the sort of introductory presentation of a workshop, I’ll often show people stories, and then ask them… what makes a story a good story and ask them to sort of assess and yeah, they all have always say the same thing: it’s gotta somehow grab my emotions and I have to be able to relate to it.
A sense of relatability or fellowship, as Cláudia (Digital storytelling facilitator, Brazil) noted, is evident in stories that are relatable. In contrast, stories that are unrelatable can result in a sense of disconnection for a viewer. For example, when thinking about her least favourite story, Trinley (Healthcare Professional, Canada) said:
Um, I guess the last one because it wasn’t as clear as to what… had actually happened… I guess (Jon’s story) because it was more vague… it wasn’t as strong as an of an emotional connection to his story… I mean, I think things that really make you have… make the viewer have like an emotional connection to it.
Many authors have written about various types of stories. British Sociologist Clive Seale (2002) writes about the portrayal of health experiences in the media in “Media and Health”. In a chapter called “The Production of Unreality,” Seale (2002) provides evidence of how stories in the media produce unrealistic portrayals of health-related experiences, often to please an audience or to meet their expectations.
According to Seale (2002), some of the reasons why participants expected to see the common narrative of the hero, villain, victim, and so on, may be because of the ways that media constructs children’s stories. However, it turns out that some audiences are curious, and interested in feeling surprised by great stories created by youth. This is conveyed in Barbara’s (A psychologist and filmmaker, Canada) response to Brigitte’s story:
I love the storytelling part of this one because it wasn’t so linear or concrete… she went inward on her journey to find herself and …found herself. And she… sees herself… and that was so powerful!
The “storytelling part” of Brigitte’s story captured Barbara’s attention because of Brigitte’s effort to express her journey to self-discovery, reflection, and awareness at the end of her story, which was surprising and powerful for Barbara to witness.
Jeff and Sara (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, Canada) felt that vulnerability is an important element in storytelling. Sara said, “Even though the story is vulnerable, telling it helps you heal (from) anything that may have happened, or at least makes you process it.” I was surprised that more participants did not mention the feeling of vulnerability. Sara and I talked about Brené Brown’s influential work in this area and that it takes a lot of courage to mention vulnerability. Sara and I worked together at two workshops and I think that contributed to the trust that she had with me in our interview and in this discussion in particular. Whereas, Jeff’s work in film, video production, and digital storytelling is based in-part on the production of emotion. Interestingly, Jeff made the connection between the importance of authenticity “[revealing] something personal” and affect, “to change your heart and your mind” in digital storytelling and cinematic productions:
To be a… a memorable character in any story, whether it’s one of these are a movie, your character has to be vulnerable, flawed, to some degree,… and, the character has a personal mission: to change your heart, change your mind. So, but the youth (in these stories) are being vulnerable. I think it’s key and being brave enough to reveal something personal.
As an audience, participants noted that having an emotional connection differs from feeling emotions in response to a story. I explored how this differs by looking into what they said about this theme in relation to the theme of anticipation. For example, Jeff said:
I think that’s the goal whether you have a sad story, (or an) exciting, action-packed story. You are causing an emotional reaction in the viewer and every story must accomplish that.
In the production of emotion, in contrast to the production of digital stories, there is an opportunity for filmmakers to impose an “emotional reaction” in the viewer, as Jeff noted. Yet in digital storytelling, as is evident in Jon’s story in particular, viewers experience a range of emotions that storytellers may not be able to control.
In other instances, a viewer may react with a sense of confusion if they don’t understand what the storyteller is saying due to a language barrier. For example, Gianluca (Fine Arts Professional, Italy) spoke about the sense of disconnection that he experienced with the stories and with the language, as Italian is his first language:
For me to catch the… real feeling of all of the words and also the word that I have to maybe listen more than once to catch everything…
Now when you say, I don’t know, “sadness”… sadness is the situation of a feeling not just the… not… could be… maybe some key words highlighted the in the video and at the end … maybe (add a) glossary, when you put the specific words of text where the words that are used the know in some way and you just have to explain (the story).
A glossary is a creative idea to help overcome the language barrier, along with including captions, which these stories did not have. Gianluca also expressed that he felt disconnected with the stories as a father. He repeated the phrase, “it’s quite strange,” when referring to how child welfare is regarded in Canada, compared to in Italy, for example:
It’s quite strange, to grow up… without parents because it doesn’t happen only in Canada. But knowing that… your parents are somewhere, and you are staying alone? I think it’s very… it’s very hard to accept… You know, if I have not understood all the words or I’m for sure it for me is impossible to catch the… the feeling because it’s not my mother language and in this kind of videos is very important.
The parts that Gianluca responded to in the stories were those that he could understand. Witnessing youth in foster care was not familiar to Gianluca and the way that he unpacked that was imagining growing up without one’s own parents. In addition to the language barrier, Gianluca’s viewing experience was thwarted by this unfamiliar situation of youth leaving foster care to live independently with little to no resources. As he rolled and lit his cigarette near the end of our interview, he seemed to be frustrated to learn about this experience that youth are having as both a father and family-oriented person.
Many participants shared that it was important that great stories create a sense of “human connection” (Marcus), and an “emotional connection”. Marcus shared that he connected with the stories, as the “symbolic type of thing”:
…I’m assuming that her being able to talk about this story, having her carried in such a way, with the help of you, and the help of the other organizations, I think, like that in a way is a sense of community, but I also think it’s like a symbolic type of thing, from like, the video to real life, where I’m sure in her life, she has had like, had to find like a sense of community to find a part of herself as well.
The “symbolic type of thing” Marcus was expressing is about how the digital storytelling process enabled Brigitte to create a story that she connected with and that her collaborators and community connected with, and that it grew out of an experience of feeling like she had nothing. Through creating the story, it seemed to Marcus and other viewers that she created connections with the facilitators, fellow storytellers, and her viewers who could relate to the experience of self-discovery.
Empathy
Many participants talked about the feeling of empathy and empathizing with the storytellers. Only a handful of participants (n= 6), three from the healthcare field and three from the digital storytelling field, directly discussed compassion. For example, when talking about her favourite story, Trinley noted that Brigitte’s story impacted her but that she “felt compassion and sadness about the other ones”. On many occasions, participants mentioned that they felt empathetic towards the youth who created the digital stories. Unfortunately, they could rarely elaborate about why they felt this way. Nonspecific responses to questions may be due to feeling empathetic towards the youth storytellers, or sometimes participants needed more time to think about how to respond (S. Zembrzycki, 2021, personal communication). Participants described feeling compelled to either change the experience for the protagonist or they described how the stories influenced their outlook on the situations portrayed.
Over time, I became more attuned to listening for responses about empathy. At the same time, I was mindful about not priming participants to talk about compassion or empathy specifically. Rather, I mentioned the words in summation of what they said in our discussions. When I did this, I noticed that some participants identified that there is empathy for the youth or certain stories that they shared, but interestingly, digital storytelling facilitators who discussed having a compassionate response tended to avoid a deeper discussion about compassion. For example, Cláudia noted:
CLÁUDIA: I feel better. I like the scene of the ocean, the ice, I like it, I feel better. I like, so much, the narrative slowly, because you can understand, you can feel the same thing that people are talking and thinking like you.
BRYN: Empathy?
CLÁUDIA: Yeah! Yeah, empathy. Yeah, yeah. I think that it is. Because nowadays, I don’t know in Canada, but in Brazil, we are talking so much about how it is to be in the place of the other.
…
BRYN: Yes, we’re doing that here, because here, people are getting older, and we’re working to support older generations with empathic responses, so it’s a big topic…Empathy means getting into the shoes of the other person, right?
CLÁUDIA: Okay.
BRYN: Sometimes as an audience member, you can never really get into the shoes. So, I also wonder about compassion.
CLÁUDIA: No, I think it’s about fellowship.
In response to hearing “compassion,” Cláudia quickly said, “No…fellowship”. Fellowship, instead of compassion, signals the alliance and comradery of a witness, not to the need to act, but to befriend. I wasn’t able to ask her more about this because she was moving on to watch another story. But later, we talked about this again, and because of her work in digital storytelling facilitation, Cláudia explained that there is a need for fellowship as a facilitator so she can also maintain the social distance and professionalism required in her work. She also said that the experience of digital storytelling can be “empowering” to participants who might have never told their stories in this way before, and she went on to say:
To organize the story, recognize the feelings. It’s so powerful… The great story is your capacity to listen, for me. It’s not formal, traditional, it’s not, ahh…it’s not a quiz. You have to have empathy for the people. This is a great story.
When participants did discuss compassion, they often talked about the need to change or to change foster care specifically. Marcus drew on his own experience of hearing stories from his mother who works in child and family services to speak about the state of foster care and the experiences of youth in care and youth aging out of care:
I think it’s important to understand what it’s like to be in this situation. Um, because I think it’s important for people to connect and be empathetic towards people, especially younger people, or people that are at risk and living in the system, cause I think like even a little compassion could change a lot of how we have preconceived notions about um children are growing up in foster care systems, or how children cope with that or how they end up later in life even.
In contrast, Mary-Jo spoke of the need for self-compassion for those who are caring for youth in care:
MARY-JO: I just I know that I have a limited amount of energy and that you know, I do that for me. I have my head down doing the starfish thing, you know, the starfish principle?
BRYN: I don’t.
MARY-JO: So, the little kid is on the beach and the beach is covered in starfish after the tide has gone out and all these starfish are starting to get too hot in the sun right, and the little kid is walking down the beach throwing the starfish back into the ocean. A guy walks along and says, “But hey, you’re never going to throw all these starfish back in before they die”. The kid says, “Oh, yeah, but it matters to this starfish”. So, the point is that the kid saves the number of starfish the kid can save, and throws them back into the ocean, and just has to say “Yep, those are the ones that that got back in the ocean”. You can’t… you can’t not do that, if you can do that, just because you won’t get them all (laughs). Right? So, it’s kind of starfish principle for me. I try to help the kids that I can.
This visceral story about setting boundaries as a facilitator and from Mary-Jo’s experience as a psychologist touched a chord with me. As she shared the story, I thought of a moment at my first digital storytelling workshop where I reflected with Allison during a break on the importance of “distancing,” which was a term I was familiar with at the time as a volunteer at a hospital in downtown Toronto. The way that I understood this concept of “distancing” at the time is that one makes every effort to connect with a patient or client but does not become attached; there are boundaries that you apply in your interactions, such as not divulging personal identifiable information.
After Mary-Jo talked about the starfish principle, what was so impactful for me was the sense of powerlessness that a facilitator or care provider may feel in response to witnessing a vulnerable individual express a vulnerable experience for their first time using digital media tools. The desire to try and help a participant “overcome” their experience may be strong. But, as I learned in subsequent post workshop debriefing meetings with facilitators, often at our dorms on site or at a restaurant on the eve of the workshop screening, is that it is not the job of a facilitator to do that: digital storytelling workshops are not designed to be therapeutic interventions. Nevertheless, facilitators (like healthcare providers who practice distancing techniques) can (and do) make meaningful connections with small groups of participants. Those connections can have very positive impacts on participants’ life trajectories. The experience of “fellowship” as Cláudia said, may adequately represent the limits of our abilities, but only adequately, in my perspective. As Mary-Jo said, “…it matters to this starfish,” and indeed, so many youth are left behind.
In medical education, Robert expressed that he is aware that medical students may not have grown up with difficult life experiences, and that he asks medical students to read divergently so that they can “…understand things outside of their experience.” Following this, Robert said:
So, I’ll get people to read things written by good writers about what it’s like to be really sick because most medical students that I’m teaching have never been really sick. So that kind of idea, right it can work like that.
Robert’s discussion of building empathy through education with medical students triggered what I was reflecting on about participant’s responses to the stories about empathy. Robert also noted that the foster care system in Canada specifically has a role for youth in care and he said, “…still often it is not very good.” In summary, he emphasizes that his response is in reflection of what he observed in the stories and not based on any assumptions, which I thought was refreshing to hear a participant say.
Robert’s response and discussion about teaching empathy to medical students illustrates that empathy may or may not be a response by an audience. An audience responds to what they see, hear, and sense overall in a story.
Authenticity
Great stories are authentic and honest; they involve the sharing of personal experiences.
In 31 of 34 interviews, participants shared the importance of authentic, honest, and personal storytelling. These conversations usually contrasted personal narratives with the pervasive tendencies of mainstream and social media of sensationalizing stories and misrepresenting “real” experiences. In some everyday life situations, words that suggest ideal behaviours like “authentic” can become a cliché if they are overused and taken out of context. Joe commented on this:
…you and I can spend the rest of the year talking about what the heck… ‘authenticity’ means. It means everything and nothing because it’s such a… a constructed idea, right?
Stories that engage authentically with challenging topics and the intentional act of making stories authentic differs. In the latter, the “constructed idea” that Joe talks about emerges. Whereas the former outcome may not be as easy to achieve. Since “authenticity” showed up in the data so many times, I explored why it was emerging so often, and in what context.
In this excerpt of our discussion, Antonia makes a good suggestion about how to create authentic digital stories:
I think sometimes it’s best when you… just try it, without having a lot of filters… just not thinking it… not thinking about it too much. Yeah, it’s because it gets more real and direct. Because if you spend a lot of time editing a lot of story, then you lose… I think sometimes you have to be very good not to lose it (the story).
As Antonia said, authentic stories are about “real and direct” representations of a situation or experience. Also, Antonia’s comment addresses the issue of editing, which is a skill that many video producers specialize in and that novice digital storytellers may struggle with. For example, some digital storytellers may over- or under-edit a story, so that postproduction techniques overpower the story.
Within this theme, two attributes of authenticity are highlighted: honesty and personal experiences.
Honesty
Repeatedly, participants highlighted how important it is to see and hear honest stories about youth formally in foster care from the youth themselves. Initially, I was surprised that Malaika saw video-based media about adoption or foster care before our discussion, as almost all other participants had not. Most participants only saw media portrayals of youth in care and adopted youth in print media, including newsletters, and advertisements posted on telephone polls (Chloe). Trinley and Barbara mentioned seeing films about youth in foster care.
It was not surprising to me to hear from Malaika that children were not telling the stories themselves in the media that she saw. Malaika said, “Yes, but the kids are not telling the stories. It’s normally, like kids playing, or someone telling the story about them.” Our conversation continued:
MALAIKA: They will tell stories…So it’s someone else’s voice. Someone that has the perfect sounding voice. That captivating voice, they’ll have the moral music playing in the back.
BRYN: Like the piano music? (asked with regret)…
MALAIKA: Yeah, the piano, the soft music, and then they just show these like really cute kids. They’ll show the older kids too, but the kids are so perfect and polished kids.
BRYN: Simulated…
MALAIKA: Uh huh. It’s like “Look how cute these kids are” right… so, they do that a lot, and they try to go for the perfection look. Um hm.
BRYN: Not the reality.
MALAIKA: Not the reality. Yep.
BRYN: So, the truth is not getting out there and then foster parents are finding out…
MALAIKA: Yeah, and finding out that it’s more difficult than they expected. Or, a lot of times they may highlight the younger kids, or people may forget that there are older kids, that that’s an option, and so I think that that is, you know that becomes a concern.
In this discussion, it is evident that Malaika is concerned about the presentation of an unreal experience by youth in care. The ways that youth in care who need a permanent home are presented on televised media is having a ripple effect with all who are affected, including potential foster parents, youth, and youth that are nearing the age of being ineligible for permanent adoption.
Sometimes storytellers are drawn to using statistical information to convey ‘objective’ truths. However, I agree with Sarah (Arts and Health Researcher, Canada), who said:
A lot of young people I work with speak very much against being labelled a statistic, and they don’t want to be a statistic. I feel like… storytelling provides the opposite of statistics. It kind of opens things up. It doesn’t foreclose meaning; it is contradictory to that. You know, it’s relational in a sense.
Sarah’s point is supported by an example from Brigitte’s digital story. When recording her audio, Brigitte said, “I am not a stat – a statistic”. Brigitte ended up recording her entire four minutes of audio in one take. She did not re-record that section of her audio; her slight stutter underscored how important it was for her that her audience hear that youth formally in care do not wish to be called a statistic, or to be represented as a statistic, as Sarah also mentioned. For Brigitte, storytelling as Sarah said, acted as a place to share her thoughts and ideas in a “relational” and conversational way that numerical data fails to represent.
Other participants noted that statistical information that is presented in a digital story in-combination with the story – not in-place of the story – might make the story more accessible to people who have little knowledge about the topics addressed in the story. For example, as a facilitator, Jacqueline emphasized that sometimes stories “…might make you think about parts of their (participant’s) story or identity or trauma in a way that you’ll go, ‘I never even thought about that before, you know’.” As facilitators, Jacqueline and I reflected on this serendipitous experience of witnessing digital storytelling and creative production.
As Sarah said, “digital storytelling…does not foreclose meaning; it is contradictory to that”. The meaning that people share in their stories is personal and often meant to invoke deeper reflection in a viewer, rather than suggest that a viewer agree with a result from a statistic. In Jon’s story, Shusuke (Fine Arts Professional, Japan) noted how strong he was even though he was lied to many times in his life. Shusuke also discussed the metaphors in Robyn’s story and how it could change one’s outlook on an experience. Then, he shared how all three stories are generally about “how they got through (the) experience”:
…from my point of view, he has a strong uh… life, in a way, or a special life in a way, that not many people had. But still today, for him, it’s still natural, or how he got through in a way. The end…somehow feels honest… it touched me actually.
One can only assume that the stories that the youth shared are honest portrayals of their experiences. What Shusuke is saying though, is that he recognized the central theme of resilience across all three stories and that Jon’s story in particular resonated with Shusuke in an almost indescribable way.
Digital stories are constructed and edited. Nicholas (Digital Storytelling Facilitator, France) said, “it’s not the truth 100% because it’s storytelling.” As Daniel stated:
Most people who are good storytellers are just people who are good at telling lies (laughs)… there isn’t that there isn’t truth in the story… it’s that you leave out so much, that…that you… you… yeah, you create something that is only it’s truthful without being the truth.
If a storyteller started a workshop with the objective of sharing an honest and personal story, as Antonia also expressed, they may end up accidentally or unintentionally creating a story that could be seen as misleading and dishonest. To many participants, Jon’s story stood out as a great story because of Jon’s authentic compulsion to tell an honest story about his life and his realization that he was lied to.
Steve (Social Services Professional, Canada) shared that a story can also distort the real experiences of what happens in care:
I also think sometimes we hear that coming into care or being in care was the cause of your problems… It’s easier to blame a system than it is to say actually that ‘These are things that happened because of choices… or, maybe not choices, but things that happened in my family of origin.’
When the youth told their stories about what happened while they were in care, the impact of their honest, authentic statements stood out for many participants who listened to the stories. Hearing and seeing a story about a new perspective on a familiar situation can cause a viewer to feel drawn into the story and suspend their disbelief on the situation (Frye, 1964).
Jenni-Juulia (Fine Arts Professional, Finland) shared how important it is to her that there is less entertainment and more honest storytelling in the media:
I think always, like, real-life stories are important. I don’t mean that we should only make documentaries or like all these three stories could also be mixed into one making one in important story about foster care… but it has to be told in a way that gives a new angle to the thing.
In Jenni-Juulia’s response to “What makes a great story?” she said that it’s important to learn about the honest “angle” of the story because often stories are told for entertainment when the story subject matter is not always entertaining. In this example, she reflects on her awareness of digital storytelling in the media and she shared that often digital stories are told on behalf or for children or youth in care, but not by them:
I don’t hear enough of the voices of these children. I’m only hearing the journalists’ terrifying stories… how terrified they are when they are writing about things that are happening wrong in these places but also often in those, there is no interview of the kids. There’s only like this concept journalists telling what now happened.
As Steve asserts, there are a lot of contributing factors that result in the need for placing children or youth in foster care, but as Jenni-Juulia noted, there are negative distortions presented in the media from one-sided perspectives that leave out the perspective of children and youth who are experiencing these life transitions.
Today, we are bombarded with media that is, or is perceived to be “fake news” or disinformation. Cláudia spoke about this dilemma:
Ah…I think of my PhD, … and we are talking about how important it is to give voice for the real people. For the people who are in the real problem. …. The life story, I think it can help to transport the media, the newspaper, magazine, the TV reporters, make it more real. More real. …. …. So, I feel if you show history, and real-life stories in media, it is better, it is more real. But here in Brazil, we’re living in a place that has fake news. All the news are fake news.
The solution to the problem of fake news that Cláudia feels is effective, is if real stories are shared in the media. At the beginning of this excerpt, Cláudia identified the risk of giving voice for real people. The risk in doing that is the voice that is shared, as Cláudia describes, is not the voice that the person wants to share, but it is the voice that is given to the media or by the media, for example. As Cláudia and Jenni-Juulia observed in these three stories, youth digital storytellers are capable of sharing their perspectives in dynamic and compelling ways, if only there were more opportunities for their voices to be heard.
From a constructivist standpoint, the act of “giving voice” is controversial (Gillett, 1998). From a noncontroversial relativist and noncontroversial constructivist perspective, the notion of a “real” voice is relative to “history, culture, and individual circumstances” (Gillett, 1998, p. 4). So, enabling people to tell their life stories, as Cláudia explains, is definitely better than telling stories for people, because of the risks of spreading misinformation or disinformation through the media through what is not told, or because of what is told in place of another story.
Genuine efforts to tell honest stories, as Barrie said, do not inherently persuade one’s thinking about an issue. Barrie goes on to say:
In fact, they could put somebody off (of foster care), because quite clearly these people have left care with complicated lives. Whereas … films I’ve seen about foster care have played on the emotional to a certain extent, and they get you to pity the individual involved which you know pity is a very bad motivator, I think, and I would much rather that people saw something like this along with factual stuff, and they would obviously, you know, they’d only be part of the process.
Like many other participants, Barrie picked up on the issue of the “play on the emotional” in digital stories about foster care. To explain his rationale for not approaching digital stories like this, Barrie noted that “pity is a very bad motivator”. Essentially what ends up happening, unfortunately, is that stories are told on behalf of youth in the media, the responses from viewers are of pity and concern, but little action is taken or policy changed. Whereas if stories were more genuine, more authentic, and shared by youth, as Barrie notes, they might compel an audience to act to change a situation because of the sense of guilt that is created from seeing youth having to share their stories to affect change.
Personal
A dimension of authentic storytelling is the act of portraying personal experiences. Participants talked about the importance of sharing stories about personal experiences and about connecting with the stories. Nariman (Fine Arts Professional, Canada) felt that though the three digital stories by the youth were very personal experiences, it was equally important that the stories were coming from the youth themselves:
These are very personal. I think it’s important that they were speaking for themselves and defining their experience in their own words. So instead of having someone else relate or moderate the information and yeah, it was nice that this was their own–very own version of it.
In these stories, viewers had a chance to deeply reflect and respond to the meaning of the personal experiences that were explicitly shared or implied. Sarah noted that great stories are effective when an audience can “work a little bit” to discover the meaning behind the experiences shared:
I think that sometimes the positive stories are also really beautiful and brilliant. …I think the real power of digital storytelling is that they can give an insider perspective.… [of] someone’s real life experience or narrative and that experience might be very different than the person in the audience, right? When I think about like, pedagogical possibilities through their possibilities for like policy change or knowledge transfer and in that respect, I think if the audience can kind of work a little bit, it makes the story more successful rather than kind of a didactic, ‘and then this is what happens,’ right?
Following this, Sarah shared an example that if stories were didactic, it would be a similar experience to reading a report which cannot convey the “…heart behind a story, you know, the humanity behind a story.” Stories that share personal experiences, as Sarah also noted, give “…people an insider view of kind of what it means to walk in someone else’s shoes.” The insider view is the digital story, or the story that one hears or sees to learn more about someone else’s experiences. While the viewer experiences the story, if the storyteller has shared a personal experience, it is possible to allow the audience to empathize with the storyteller and to feel what it is like to experience those things.
Karl described the need for young people in particular to share personal experiences in their digital stories:
It is important for young people to see. That’s one of the things we found, ah – one of the reasons for publishing the stories that we created was to enable others (youth) who were at risk to be able to realize that everyone has a story to tell. And that must be their story, you know, that they can find parallels, or they can find… they can make meaning of their story because it’s about making meaning.
The perception of how people working in child welfare understand the stories of youth in care is distorted from the reality in some cases. In many instances, the opposite sentiment is true: some child welfare workers hold a deep level of empathy and care for the circumstances that youth are in. For instance, Blake (Social Services Professional, Canada) noted,
So I think just the way as it struck me some of it was just the kind of numbness that’s in the kids, especially the first (Brigitte’s) and the third one (Robyn’s). Some youth just feeling like their life’s on pause, yeah, it seems like they either need a family, or they’re just kind of stuck in care. They aren’t necessarily living their life, they’re just going through the motions. Especially the first one, like she’s kind of… they should have their life is just kind of going through the motions of living their life per se.
In this reflection, Blake shares his moment of realization after watching the three stories, when he saw how the youth felt detached from their lives. I drew from his observations that he felt it was important for many others working in social services to also watch these stories. As a worker, reflecting on the “numbness inside” and life being “on pause,” these metaphors reflect the medium of digital storytelling, which for some youth acted like a container for their experiences.
In contrast, Steve noted how digital storytelling works to illustrate personal experiences and how, in his work, the type of videos that are effective are those that convey possibilities for intervention:
…within our agency anyways, the videos that we watch are about things we didn’t do right for kids that are in care. … it’s their perspective, it’s their story, and we kind of hear what their experience was, and I always feel like I want to know more specifics. … You know like, it would be also helpful for me to kind of hear, reflectively, like what were some of the good things about your experience, what were some of the negative things or challenges and what, like how do you think…how do you think things would’ve been different for you if you would have stayed in your family home versus coming into care, right….Whether there is any value to you, or no value to you, or do you think you would’ve been more, or less successful?
In this discussion, Steve views storytelling as a way to investigate a problem and as a learning tool to uncover how to support youth with becoming independent and successful after aging out. Similarly, the patients that Trinley works with are sometimes invited to create video diaries about their experiences of overcoming major heart surgery. Trinley noted that the video diaries convey a sort of ideal response to treatment, in a similar way that stories about youth formally in care in the media convey positive sides of experiences. Trinley reflected:
Sometimes we get videos… we see videos later on of heart transplant patients who have gotten their hearts and they’re 10 years out and they’re doing fantastic, but it’s also I think important for us to know, that there’s those that don’t thrive – after getting a life-saving [procedure]… Like sure, they’re alive, and they’re living, but what’s the quality of life like? So, I mean, I think it’s always good to have this type of… I think we should have more video diaries of patients. …. So, I think would be important for… for… I mean… any… any type of situation where it’s a life-altering event, that people have an opportunity to have these diaries. I mean, I think it’s a really good idea.
As Trinley noted, it is important for people to know about the spectrum of experiences and how significant heart surgery is for people who are making decisions about their course of treatment. For people who have decided on a specific course of treatment, it helps for Trinley to see their actual, authentic, personal experiences about the treatment and the effects of it.
As an audience, many participants noted that great stories caused a deeper level of reflection. As Nicholas noted, he felt that storytelling is not always truthful, but then said:
But it… it comes from histories, and in that sense, I think it’s more powerful than all those other media. It’s like a personal diary so, you cannot get… you cannot be more powerful in terms of intimacy than the personal diary.
As participants reflected on the meaning beneath the words and actions of the stories, and the scenes and situations that the youth shared, the ways that they engaged with the stories shifted to: describing how the stories made them feel, how the youth must have felt in those situations, and how stories can elicit a set of specific emotions in an audience.
Conclusion
In this dissertation, I set out to discover, “What makes a great story?” The data that I applied to study this question in 34 online video elicitation interviews were created by Robyn, Jon, and Brigitte, three storytellers who were formerly in foster care in Canada. It is important to undertake this work now, and for readers to leave with a clear understanding of the results of the analysis, as well as the issues that each theme uncovered, because there are so many calls to create stories across sectors in the arts, business, technology, finance, healthcare, and social services, and so on, but little guidance about how to tell great stories that result in social change in these sectors.
The findings of this study lead to the development of the “4-A Model of Great Storytelling,” which includes interconnected stages of anticipation, actualization, affect, and authenticity. Within each item are eight sub-themes that describe the findings in more detail, namely in the production, facilitation, research, and dissemination of digital stories for a specific audience.
When I set out to interview anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection about my open-ended research question, “What makes a great story?” it was pleasantly surprising that so many people across 11 countries were interested to participate and talk about how a great story, specifically a digital story, can be produced to effectively address the topic of foster care and aging out, which I assumed was unfamiliar to many people.
In Canada and internationally, there is a serious issue of a lack of data about the rates of adoption and foster care, and a lack of awareness in the media about the need for permanent adoption, specifically (United Nations, 2009). It is a double-edged steel sword: my assumption when beginning this study was that because of the general unfamiliarity of the situation of foster care in Canada, not many people would be interested to participate. A criteria of data saturation that I applied, using a modified form of information power (Malterud et al., 2016) as a guide, was to confirm if participants knew about digital storytelling or not, given the research question. In hindsight, if I asked about foster care, there may have been many more participants to recruit.
The video elicitation interviews took place over Skype from January to June 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. With almost two years of experiencing virtual communications only, the pandemic has created an “enfolding,” as Bennett stated (2005, p. 128), of virtual communication in our everyday lives: there is a social acceptance of, critique, and rejection of the use of online video conferencing systems instead of in-person communications. Though online video conferencing is not new, it is relatively new in qualitative research, with the earliest work produced in the late 90s (Henry & Fetters, 2012). Once the pandemic eventually subsides and people return to engaging in-person, many people will continue participating in online videoconferencing and researchers should use it as an opportunity to include people who may not otherwise be able to attend an in-person interview.
When analyzing an audience’s response to a digital story, a useful strategy can be to look at the conventions of painting. Jill Bennet (2005) discusses the abject gaze in Gordon Bennett’s painting, “Notes to Basquiat (Mirror)” (2001). Bennett’s painting shows an abstract face with geometric eyes looking at the viewer, as Bennet (2005, p. 129) notes, “from a place that is not our place but in which we are nevertheless thoroughly enmeshed and implicated”. This statement resonated with me, because it emphasized the involvement and responsibility of an audience while viewing art, and of the artist while making and presenting it. A similar effect occurred in the video elicitation of the three stories by Robyn, Jon, and Brigitte.
As participants watched the stories, they said that they understood what it was like to grow up as a child and the awkwardness that this experience felt like as they grew up, but they did not know (for the most part) what it was like to grow up moving from one foster care home to another. As viewers of digital stories by youth formerly in care I agree that we, as viewers and as a society are “implicated” as Bennet (2005, p. 129) noted, but not “enmeshed” enough, or at least as much as we can be, as those who compassionately care, and the video elicitation interviews in this dissertation study revealed that concern.
Following the analysis of this dissertation study and literature review, I do not think that viewers of digital stories feel a sense of implication or social responsibility due to the repression of the expression of emotions, and this is a reason that digital stories addressing social justice issues need to be developed in anticipation of the need for a specific audience to respond. To anticipate what story one needs to tell, they need to already know in a general sense, about the story that their audience needs to hear.
Anticipation of the audience is not always straightforward for a participant at a workshop, so it may be useful to workshop participants for facilitators to create a specific open-ended objective that allows participants to explore and share their stories around the theme. For example, many youths attending the workshops with the Adoption Council of Canada and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health knew that they would create stories about advocacy for permanent adoption. However, as much as a facilitation team anticipates the needs of participants in relation to the goals of a workshop or research study, some participants may shape their responses according to their needs and the needs of their peers (Rice, 2020).
In the preface of this dissertation, I noted that “without knowing my own adoption story I would not be able to undertake this work,” and to expand on what I meant in saying that, I understand that as an adoptee at five days old, my experience pales in comparison to youth that I met at the workshops, who were almost 18 and had already lived in over ten foster homes. In the first study on “Adoption: Trends and policies” by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) (United Nations, 2009), the social perception of the rates of child and youth adoption globally is likely to be far greater than what is reported. Internationally, there is a significant lack of data on rates of adoption (United Nations, 2009). In order to help adopted youth, youth in care, and youth formerly in foster care actualize the stories that they want specific audiences to hear, facilitators need to be aware of the rates of adoption, foster care, the history of child welfare, and the social regard for the child (see Appendix V).
Many stories in history are about birth, life, and death—beginnings, endings. Knowing who one is may sometimes rely upon knowing about how they came to be – in other words, their birth story. Cavarero highlights that it must be remembered that everyone, as a “unique extant” who tells a story, that “story of one’s life always begins where that person’s life begins” (Cavarero, 2000, p. 11). For youth who are adopted, as I was, we experience the connection to our individuality at a certain stage in life depending on our experiences. Memories, which shape our stories (Cavarero, 2000) are repressed and expressed. Some youth may never realize this until they are much older, if at all. When one finds out that the parents they have always known are not their biological parents, they also learn that their given name – unless it is kept by the adoptive parents – is also not their own. The identity that shaped them until that point is suddenly frozen, and Cavarero (2000, p. 8) identifies this issue as realized in Ulysses’ story, that “…everyone responds immediately to the question “who are you” by pronouncing their proper name, even if a thousand others can respond with the same name”.
One of the ways that stories are framed is in the branch of philosophy that leans towards describing what people are rather than who people are (Kottman, 2000). For example, Henri Bourdieu, and Erving Goffman, who specialize in the habitus and human-labour relations (Bourdieu, 1977) and self-presentation and identity (Goffman, 1956). Critically, digital storytelling assists individuals (and groups, where relevant), with telling their audience who they are, and Kottman notes, “… ‘who’ someone is can be ‘known’ (although this is not epistemological knowledge) through the narration of the life-story of which that person is the protagonist” (Kottman, 2000, p. viii). Kottman (2000) cites Arendt who states, “who somebody is or was we can know only by knowing the story of which they are (sic) himself the hero – their (sic) biography, in other words” (Arendt, 1957, as cited by Kottman, 2000, p. viii). By sharing who we are in a narrative form like a digital story, we can realize that we are not what we are called, but we are who we are (Kottman, in Cavarero, 2000). This shift in the semantic way of describing relations in narrative connects to American Psychologist Judith Lewis Herman’s (2015) compelling statement that a survivor of a traumatic event loses “the belief that one can be oneself in relation to others” (p. 53). Significantly, acknowledging who a storyteller is, instead of what they do (Kottman, 2000) may restore the sense of “autonomy and dignity” (Herman, 2015, p. 53) that a storyteller loses, particularly in telling a traumatic story. In Amy Hill’s project that advocates for survivors of violence “Silence Speaks,” storytellers were invited “to step into a position of power and authority in order to articulate a story that ‘talks back’ to or resists dominant discourses about violence even as it may inevitably also reflect them” (p. 127). The story that one tells may be a story about them; it may not be by definition “great,” yet, it is their story.
The ways that viewers of digital stories feel during and after watching a digital story are so variable and temporal. There are many programs now that claim to have the secret for creating a great story. For example, IDEO-U (2022) pitched an ad recently on Instagram that showed a portrait of their founder, Jenn Maer, who is Design Director at IDEO, and a “Storytelling for Influence Instructor.” Along with Maer’s profile, was a quote,
“The most important thing to remember in storytelling is that the basics of a good story have remained the same from a caveman sitting around a fire to crazy VR technology. It’s about the narrative, the compelling character, the single driving idea, making people feel things, and being personal. These elements are always going to be the same no matter what technology comes along. Stay focused on the truth of your story.”
IDEO Design Director Jenn Maer shares how to design powerful stories that can move, mobilize, and motivate people toward change, in our online course Storytelling for Influence. Course closes soon – enroll now!
Like the IDEO-U (2022) Storytelling for Influence course, Carolyn Handler Miller (2020) wrote about the gradual evolution of storytelling in a similar way to explain the similarities and differences of types of storytelling, and the development of digital, interactive forms. In contrast to the five aspects of good storytelling presented by IDEO-U (2022): “…narrative, compelling character, single driving idea, making people feel things, and being personal…” the 4-A Model, “Anticipation, Actualization, Affect, and Authenticity” in this dissertation points to the process of thinking about, planning, creating, and connecting a story with a specific audience. These attributes help storytellers, facilitators, researchers, and people interested in telling stories that will connect with a specific audience, honestly, authentically, and clearly, to create social change. This ad led me to the question, given that emotions vary for individuals, how can one process advice for specific emotional concerns?
Ahmed (2013, p. 195) states, “[E]motions then cannot be installed as the ‘truth’ of injustice, partly as they do not simply belong to subjects.” “Emotions… are effects…” of original concerns (Ahmed, 2013, p. 196). As this study found, stories that claim to portray the truth (somewhat ironically) tend to be less believable. I think the 4-A Model might assist people with their decision-making process involved in choosing a digital storytelling course to enroll in. Individuals or groups interested in creating a digital story should consider the learning objectives that the course offers, and whether or not it will deliver on the possibilities to develop a great story.
It was surprising to find out in this study that many people are not aware of the history of the foster care system in their own country! Expressions of sympathy emerged in our discussions and participants expressed feeling empathetic when hearing about the experiences of youth in care. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of the mimesis of re-abandonment that occurs when youth age out of care, and there is a lack of action to create positive change for the benefit of the child at the Municipal, Provincial, and Federal levels of Government. When adopted youth, youth in care, and youth formerly in care tell their stories, they need to feel and witness this action – compassionate caring – not sympathy. Until a child is fully acknowledged as a developing member of society who is able to continue their education, I believe that this construct will persist. As Ahmed (2013) stated,
To be moved by the suffering of some others (the ‘deserving’ poor, the innocent child, the injured hero), is also to be elevated into a place that remains untouched by other others (whose suffering cannot be converted into my sympathy or admiration). So it is not a coincidence that it is a child’s suffering that touches the nation. The child represents the face of innocence; through the child, the threat of difference is transformed into the promise or hope of likeness. That child could be mine; his pain is universalized through the imagined loss of any child as a loss that could be my loss. The child’s pain is what brings us closer to the others, because I can identify with the pain another must feel when faced by the child’s pain…the position of indebtedness is the position of gratitude (Hochschild, 2003): the other must be grateful for being saved or being brought into civil society. (p. 192).
It is simplistic to respond to a story by stating that one “feels bad” for the storyteller; however, many participants expressed that pity is not compelling. As Steve noted, many family and children’s services will attempt to place a child with a member of their family, known as “kinship care,” if the child is unable to remain in their family home due to reasons of neglect and other forms of abuse. Having at least some recognition in the form of sympathy from another person is better than nothing at all. However, from my experience of interviewing adults working in diverse fields, the social construction of the notion of the child as a “becoming” adult (Aries, 1962 as cited by Collins, 2015) has masked the need to understand the experiences and needs of the developing child. Globally, “[T]here are over a quarter of a million adoptions every year…fewer than 12 children are adopted for every 100,000 persons under age 18…adoption remains, therefore, a relatively rare event” (United Nations, 2009, p. xv). By exploring the question “What makes a great story?” with three stories created by youth formerly in foster care in Canada, I also sought to uncover strategies that this population can apply to get out the message that there is a need for permanent adoption in Canada, specifically. This was the need that I heard clearly and carried with me as I left each of the workshop rooms.
A challenge to approach in future studies is that if people do not have a connection to an experience, they will often not feel the need to respond. Situations that warrant a response might be regarded as injustices. As Ahmed (2013, p. 195) stated, “If emotions are not possessions, then the terrain of (in)justice cannot be a question of ‘having’ or ‘not having’ an emotion.” In other words, it is necessary to respond to injustices despite not having personal connections to them. Digital storytelling provides a window into the worlds of people who unfortunately, experience injustice simply because of who they are, where they were born, or where they have ended up in life.
In digital storytelling, facilitation is an act of witnessing injustice in the form of fellowship, as Claudia noted. This empathetic response converts justice to a feeling, as Ahmed (2013) noted, and it is sufficient to have fellowship, in a general sense, with participants who share their stories to help them use it for social change. Many facilitators noted the importance of maintaining healthy boundaries, avoiding dual relationships with participants, and not providing workshops as therapy when that is not a service they can offer.
Couldry (2008, p. 374) asks, “how (does) media transform the social?” He discusses the uses of “mediation” compared to “mediatization” and the implications of these terms on digital storytelling as a method for social inquiry (Couldry, 2008). Couldry (2008) makes this case that digital storytelling is mediatized in society, and he outlines two stylistic conditions of digital storytelling production:
… there are certain consistent patterns and logistics with a narrative in a digital form. (p. 381);
and
“… important features of online forms…” … “… involve “pressures” to combine, mix, and generate limited length digital material for a digital online society. This, of course results in digital stories that are too similar, lacking creativity, and imaginative exploration. (p. 381).
In comparison to mediated stories, “the concept of mediatization starts out from the notion of replication, the spreading of the media forms to spaces of contemporary life that are required to be re-presented to media forms” (p. 374). Provocatively, Couldry (p. 382) states “if digital storytellers assume that their public narratives will be in archives that can be used against them in years to come, they may adjust the stories they tell online.” Mobile digital storytellers should not only be concerned about adjusting the stories that come out, they should also be concerned about having digital foresight into the ethical and legal implications of what is shared on the World Wide Web.
Couldry (2008, p. 383) further states “by holding back up personal narratives from such sites, young people are protecting an older, private/public boundary rather than tolerating a shift in that boundary because of significant social pressure to have an online presence.” Interestingly, some personal narratives created by social media influencers, such as Greta Thunberg’s Twitter-based call to action to end climate change video, are gathering attention by policymakers due to the large numbers of followers (See https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1041369960436703232?s=20). At the time of writing this, Thunberg’s video posted on Twitter received almost 200k “likes”. In particular, the youth voice on social media is reclaiming a mediated status of personal narratives online. Yet, they maintain the two stylistic conditions outlined by Couldry (2008) above, with a single storyteller speaking directly to the camera, for example.
Due to technological advances in communication after the dotcom boom in the 1990s, digital stories can be created and shared on cellphones, at any time anywhere in the world. In the early 2000s, social media was regarded colloquially as a sort of freedom train for change. Anything and potentially everything about oneself can be shared on social media, as long as it does not involve the harassment or intimidation of other people, among other restrictions. Couldry (2008) calls digital storytelling a “shift of storytelling form” (p. 374) and it “has implications for the sustaining or expansion of democracy” (p. 374). Social media platforms such as Instagram are places where anyone with an account can create and share a story, record a voice note or live event, and reach a large population of viewers instantly. But what effect is this personal power having on society? Melumad and Meyer (2020) found that people will share more personal stories on their phones compared to their computers. In an interview with Arianne Cohen of FastCompany, Melumad stated the cellphone acts an “adult pacifier” (Cohen, 2020, para. 3) that provides “psychological comfort” (Melamud & Meyer, 2020, p. 30).
During the time of COVID-19, there are limited places where one can express themselves publicly, aside from the internet. This is the downside of digital storytelling. More and more often, digital online societies have grown to include sharing responses to tragedies, such as the loss of land due to severe weather and climate change, the loss of dignity due to bullying at work and school, and the loss of life due to gun violence. In 2020, Canada and New Zealand banned together with other world nations to stop people from sharing live videos or hate driven text on social media created by those who perpetuate crime. Despite the archives of digital videos on YouTube or CNN of America’s 45th president of the United States expelling lie after lie about current events and public policy, he remained in office until the end of his term.
We are thus at a point where the medium of digital video can no longer be reliably referred to as a source of truth. “Deepfake Videos” can be created using artificial intelligence to misrepresent the actions of celebrities for example (Deibert, 2020). MyHeritage and other DNA and family tree systems apply facial recognition technology to family photos to bring back people who passed on (Deibert, 2020). Couldry’s (2008) statement about the “…disarticulation between individual narratives and social political narratives” (p. 388) is accurate today, and social media may be the culprit.
This is not to say that digital videos do not include truthful stories, but there is a risk in creating too many stories with the aim to generate an emotional reaction without a focus or intent. As Couldry (2008, p. 386) stated,
Digital storytelling in principle…provides the means to just distribute more widely the capacity to tell important stories about oneself – to represent oneself as a social, and therefore potentially political agent – in a way that is registered in the public domain.
Nevertheless, the shift towards creating more “considered storytelling online” as Daniel Meadows said (personal communication) highlights (as Couldry (2008) also discusses) the benefits of digital storytelling, compared to storytelling within the mediatized frames of social media platforms, as Digital Storytelling (Kaare & Lundby, 2008) “operates outside the boundaries of mainstream media institutions, although it can work on the margins of such institutions” (Couldry, 2008, p. 386).
There is a risk in the method of digital storytelling that Couldry (2008) identifies, which is that it is just a phase in life that people “go through… and the stories go unseen, and become hidden overtime – the opposite of their potential as mediated forms of narrative” (p. 389). For digital storytelling participants, it is important to know about the structure of a digital storytelling workshop before getting involved. In all workshops, participants should be more cautious about enrolling when it is unclear how the stories will be archived or disseminated, as it diminishes the democratizing effect of a digital story if the story is mediatized (Couldry, 2008) in a format that a participant does not feel in control of. The objectives of digital stories and workshop goals are important to consider early on, such as: can stories become mediated forms for a global, web-based society to learn from, or can stories be shared in other artistic formats as mediatized stories to subvert hegemonic structures that limit or oppress the voice that the storyteller wishes to express (Couldry, 2008)?
After the COVID-19 pandemic, collaboration will be an essential element of digital storytelling research and practice. International and interactive approaches to digital production (Marshall et al., 2020; Miller, 2020) will expand the method. In “Participation, flow, redistribution of authorship,” Sara Diamond (2008) makes the case that curators are essential to collaboration, as they work closely with all stakeholders in ensuring that all collaborators are included. Critically, Diamond (2008, p. 153) notes that the artist is not privileged in curatorial work as “…the role of the artist as originator is as subject to challenge as is the role of curator.” Diamond (2008, p. 136) noted that collaboration “can be understood as a process between two or more individuals that blurs roles, can confuse authorship, and can create new forms of identification and cohesion.” Trends in the literature across the arts, healthcare, and education sectors indicate that there will be a shift away from self-created artifacts (Miller, 2020) to co-created and co-designed (Barber, 2016), participatory (Marshall, 2021), and collaboratively researched outputs about collective experiences (Marshall, Smaira & Staeheli, 2021). Marshall et al., (2021) talk about ways to apply digital storytelling today in a collaborative approach and using GIS. They stated:
The challenge remains how to use spatial visualization in a way that pivots between lived and representational space, that is, between individual experience and social-spatial context (Bodenhamer, Harris, and Corrigan 2013). It is in this in-between space that we locate place-based digital storytelling. (p. 3).
Marshall et al., (2021) recommend collaboration in the production of place-based narratives for future digital storytelling projects. Digital stories sit within the frame of social technologies, which Bazely et al., (2015) propose are sustainable approaches to enhancing knowledge production, and build on existing knowledge and share it within a community. Bazely et al., (2015, p. 7) were the first researchers to “conceptualize knowledge as a nutrient in the ecosystem.” Their definition of social technologies is useful to consider in the reflections on the sustainability of digital storytelling practice:
Social technologies can be born within a community or academic environment. They can also combine popular knowledge and technical-scientific knowledge. Essentially, the effectiveness of these technologies multiplies, allowing development to scale-up… Social technologies are key to economic, social and environmental sustainability. (Dagnino et al. 2004, Funda o Banco do Brasil 2009, Costa 2013). (Bazely et al., 2015, p. 9).
Digital storytelling is a collaborative practice and today, collaboration occurs across borders. As a multimodal reflexive method, GIS tools can be used to visualize themes in a study and to make connections between stories on a map. A challenge for digital storytelling facilitators and digital storytellers is to think about how to effectively combine GIS software with digital storytelling production technologies without feeling frustrated with the technology or having to use too many systems.
It is evident in the literature review and the findings of this dissertation study that great stories involve an immersion of the self in the dialogue and actions of a protagonist. As Holstein and Gubrium (2000) noted in “The Self We Live By: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World”, “narrative practice… is a part of interpretive practice, a term we use to simultaneously characterize the activities of storytelling, the resources used to tell stories, and the auspices under which stories are told” (p. 104).
Some stories invoke deep thoughts about the present and future state of an everyday life experience. As Holstein and Gubrium (2000) stated, “over and over, we are learning that selves are constructed through storytelling (Ezzy, 1998, Randall, 1995, p. 4). These “selves” are viewed as an “undeniable feature of contemporary social life, a presence that is more vital, dynamic, and necessary than ever” (p. 4). For example, there is an entire generation of youth today that are creating stories about their lives with known and unknown effects, with exploratory and experiential approaches to production, and with a sharp acuity to the need to be seen and heard by a specific audience. This trend is not new to youth. Youth today, as in the past, are not naïve about the effects of technology. Rather, new technologies today compared to those in the past involve greater ethical risks that are largely unknown.
Many authors claim that digital storytelling can elevate the voice of those who have been silenced by oppressive circumstances. In the “dark side” of selfhood, Holstein and Gubrium (2000) emphasize the effect of “stigmatization” on narratives about the self. They note that social psychologist Erving Goffman (1963) found that the stigmatized (emphasis added) “take on society’s view of themselves” (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000, p. 54). This critique by Holstein and Gubrium (2000) on the concept explored by Goffman in 1963 is both outdated yet intriguing to reconsider today, to think about how stories of the self are shared, or not, and why not.
For instance, stigmatization is one component of the cycle of structural racism (Loury, 2005). In “Racial stigma and its consequences” Loury (2005, p. 2) notes that the “indirect and subtle effects of racial stigma (is) distinct from discrimination”. It is worth reconsidering the effect of stigmatization on narratives of the self, while conceptualizing how narratives of the self can contribute to the production of great stories for underrepresented people in particular, for example youth formerly in foster care in Canada.
Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the experiences of the most vulnerable individuals in society. As social inequities are revealed around the world, for example, in terms of the free and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines that prevent serious illness or hospitalization, it is clear that the effects of stigmatization transcend race and gender to an intersectional (Crenshaw, 1991) way of thinking about and addressing stigma. People who are stigmatized stand in opposition to those who are not (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). The stigmatized are often mistreated by those who are in positions of power. For example, in August 2021 people living in homeless encampments at parks in downtown Toronto due to overcrowded conditions in public shelters were forcibly removed from the parks by police. The stories of the stigmatized are cyclic and repetitive. As Loury (2005, p. 2) noted, stigmatization repeats in
… “vicious circles” of cumulative causation: self-sustaining processes in which the failure of blacks to make progress justifies for whites the very prejudicial attitudes that, when reflected in social and political action, ensure that blacks will not advance.
Referring to the work of George H. Mead, Holstein and Gubrium (2000, p. 27) stated “self-consciousness rather than feelings, ‘provides the core and primary structure of the self’”. In some cases, repetition of stories can occur subconsciously; however, it is productive to think of it as a self-conscious, intentional occurrence. When doing so, there may be a range of effects that are felt positively or negatively. Yet, in an interview with Eldershaw, Mayan, and Winkler (2007) sociologist Arthur Frank stated:
…the crucial thing is that we need to get away from this rather crude epistemology of one person having the story inside of him- or herself and then delivering the story like the goose laying the egg in the presence of the other person, who then goes: What an egg! In fact, it’s a collaborative activity all the way through. (Eldershaw, Mayan, & Winkler, 2007, p. 133).
As I found in the literature review on digital storytelling in healthcare, it is nearly impossible for people to avoid describing the self (Frank, 1995). Ill people need to tell their stories in order to construct new maps and new perceptions of their relationship to the world. Stories about illness in particular always contain a form of testimony (Frank, 1995). In the following excerpt, Frank (1995) explains that the idea that one person can give voice for people who are ill, particularly in a medical context, is problematic because:
A person who is bombarded with so many points of view has to struggle to hold one point of view that can be recognized as her own. When this happens, we lose the continuity of our experiences; we become people who are written on from the outside.
The postmodern phrase that complements “reclaiming” is “finding one’s voice”. Here also a significant truth underpins the cliché: people who are written on from the outside have lost their voices. Speaking in a voice recognizable as one’s own becomes increasingly difficult, so speech proliferates in search of the voice. (p. 71).
Frank’s (2012) interest in narrative began when he encountered a story of a child in hospital who said, “‘Tell someone…’ the child whispered, ‘Tell someone I’m here’” (2012, Loc. 117). Throughout his book, “Letting Stories Breathe,” Frank (2012) emphasizes that it is natural for people to repeat stories; that stories are essential for life and are often recycled (2012).
What storytellers need is to be heard, to be recognized, and to recognize their stories within, along with the stories that are told about, with, and for them, as Blackstock and Blackstock (2021) and Moore (2012) remind us in their reframing of the act of coming in, instead of coming out as a liberatory and emancipatory approach to advocacy with (not for) underrepresented and vulnerable populations, including BIPOC+ and Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, and additional sexual orientations and gender identities (2SLGBTQI+) communities. The act of being heard and recognized is discussed by French Philosopher and Narrative Theorist Paul Ricœur in the book, “Memory, history, and forgetting” (2006/2000).
Stories and memories that are recalled are recognized (Ricœur, 2006). As Ricœur (2006, p. 434) stated, “[R]ecognition authorizes us to believe it: what we have once seen, heard, experienced, or learned is not definitively lost, but survives since we can recall it and recognize it.” In contrast to Frank’s claims about self-stories (1995), Ricœur (2006, p. 120–121) stated “the earliest memories are shared memories, common memories. They allow us to affirm that “in reality, we are never alone”. Having said that, Loury (2005, p. 5) reminds us that there is “a complex web of social connections and a long train of historical influences [that] interact to form the opportunities and shape the outlooks of individuals.”
As participants responded to the stories, they were tuning into the stories that the youth told and recovering their memories of similar stories and circumstances that they were familiar with, as a way of orienting to the media. The survival of the image as Ricœur (2006) notes is important in video elicitation interviews, where the visual imagery sustains and helps a participant describe what they witnessed. Likewise, in reflexive practice the survival of images signifies the difference between research practice as usual, obtaining permission from an ethics board to undertake a research study, and “ethics in practice” which involves attuning to the ethical issues that may arise in research practice (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004, p. 262).
Holstein and Gubrium (2000) make intriguing claims about the narratable self but Cavarero (2000), who wrote at the same time, described the power of storytelling as a platform where the self becomes free – reified – which is a compelling statement that reimagines the “dark side” that is “taken on” by storied selves posited by Holstein and Gubrium (2000, p. 54). Likewise, Frank (in Eldershaw, et al., 2007, p. 133), stated,
People beat up on other people with stories all the time. That’s the damaged identities thing. It’s what I’ve had to acknowledge…that stories have their very dark side (emphasis added). Telling a story is not in itself any kind of high ground. Stories are used just as much to oppress and to justify violence as they are used to liberate. It’s where we have to be willing to entertain that duality. I don’t see any way around it.
From a humanistic perspective that Ricœur (2006) employs, to interpret and employ stories, it may not be possible or even necessary to “entertain” this duality between oppression and liberation (Frank, 1995). The fact is, the stigmatized often do not get to choose how their stories are told. Instead of getting caught in a cycle of repetition and “doom scrolling,” a perspective on storytelling that makes space for recognition offers a chance for the stigmatized to challenge the narratives that they have – not that they take on – and the narratives that are imposed upon them (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000) through recognizing (Ricœur, 2006) the stories that can be told.
At a time when connection–authentic connection, as multiple participants reiterated in this study–is at the forefront of communication online and in-person, I believe that it is important to consider the questions: “What stories need to be created and shared to establish and maintain authentic connection?” and “What stories do not need to be shared at this time, specifically?” The reason that I think it is important to consider these other two questions, is that the current lack of anticipation, actualization, affect, and authenticity that is involved in the production of great digital stories is creating the opposite effect of what is needed: prediction and speculation, disinformation and fake news (Deibert, 2020), and detachment and resignation from creative exploration and action of sharing “considered narratives” (Meadows, personal communication, 2019) in digital media formats. Though the perspectives on the stories differ from each participant, the commonalities that they share are that stories matter: that the storyteller’s voice is accepted and nurtured, and that more platforms need to be made available for youth in care and youth formally in care to think about, create, share – and decide what not to share, without penalty – their stories with specific audiences that can feel and sense what it is like to walk in their shoes and help create meaningful social change.
In addition to what is already presented in this dissertation, I want to emphasize here that in future work, facilitators who are aware of the affective point between anticipation of a suitable audience for a story and actualization of a story need to hold space for the potentially disruptive changes that a storyteller might encounter in the creative process of digital storytelling. Healthcare and social service providers may be familiar with cathartic expression or physiological responses, and less so with a storyteller who is interested to approach a story in destabilizing ways through the expression of pain, and loss, as artists may be (Nouvet & Sinding, 2016). Instead of dismissing difference in digital storytelling, give space for the unfamiliar yet safe expression of difficult emotional responses that one has held inside due to internal and external barriers to expression. At the same time, it is important for everyone to have an awareness of ethical and free expression through the arts, and to know that it is also one’s right not to share if they do not feel ready to do so.
Great stories emerge with great listeners.
Citation for dissemination and publication purposes
Ludlow, B. (2022). “What makes a great story?”: Multidisciplinary and International Perspectives On Digital Stories By Youth Formerly In Foster Care In Canada. [Doctoral dissertation, York University]. Electronic Theses & Dissertations. http://hdl.handle.net/10315/40688
Bryn Ludlow, PhD is a queer African Canadian artist and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Jean Augustine Chair, in the Faculty of Education at York University. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6939-0540
