Reframing Digital Storytelling as Co?creative

Abstract

This study of the digital storytelling (DST) project at the South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium examines the capacity of DST practice to articulate women's diverse experiences of empowerment, given the genre's formalities and narrative guidelines. I challenge notions that DST mediation is limited to relationships between the storyteller and the technology, and instead focus on mediation as a co?creative process. There are at least two overlooked dynamics in DST. The first is how the organisation adopts narrative guidelines to fit their framework and purpose; and second, the social relationships mediating the way actors related to one another in the workshop. I find that the workshop model and specific narrative structure may constrain ways of conveying ‘experience’. Not every participant's experience or mode of narration is readily suited for DST. On the other hand, participants also report DST as useful for strengthening community relationships and opening up a more self?reflexive space for critical thinking.