The Revolution in Transmedia Storytelling through Place

Pervasive, Ambient and Situated

Donna Hancox

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000346305
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Media & Performing Arts
• Sous-sujet: Performing Arts

This book proposes that the theory and practice of transmedia storytelling must be re-considered from a social impact and community development perspective, and that time has come for a rigorous critique of the limited ways in which it has been commonly represented.

Transmedia storytelling has become one of the most influential and profitable innovations in the field of media and entertainment. It has changed the ways audiences interact with films, television and web series, advertising, gaming and book publishing. It has also shifted the practices around creation and dissemination of such content. This book asserts that the futures of transmedia storytelling for social impact or change are deeply tied to understandings of place grounded in human geography. Through a series of case studies of projects which challenge the status quo of transmedia, this book explores the elements of transmedia that can be used to amplify under-represented voices and make stories that signal a more inclusive and sustainable future.

This book offers a valuable contribution to the literature in the areas of transmedia storytelling, narratology, digital fiction, electronic literature, locative storytelling, performative writing, digital culture studies and human geography.

1 Stories everywhere

Storytelling is the most human of activities. We are hardwired to tell stories for enjoyment as a form of education and to connect with each other. Across human history, our stories have been painted on cave walls, shared around a campfire, scarred on to our skin, braided into our hair and left on the earth under our feet. In a very short span of time, particularly the past decade, the avenues through which communities and community organisations raise awareness about the issues they face and how they agitate for change have proliferated. Digital technology has provided activists with the means to quickly create and widely disseminate their messages and realities. This chapter explores a series of such stories and investigates the ways specific projects have been successful and what success might mean for them.

It is worth noting here that the terms story and narrative are often used interchangeably; I consider them complementary and entwined but they do differ. If story is the entirety of the experience being articulated, then narrative represents the deliberate choices around its elements, such as narratorial perspective, narrative structure, order and temporality. Storytelling, as mentioned in the Preface, can take the form of visual art, performance, textual, oral, aural, film, animation and any combination of these mediums. Digital technology has influenced the ways we tell stories but it has not necessarily obliterated entrenched power structures, for as Raymond Williams reminds us, each new medium has the old power struggles inevitably mapped onto the newly emergent forms (1975). If anything, newly emergent forms such as transmedia storytelling have made it even clearer whose voices and stories are missing from the mainstream, but it has also made it clear that how we tell stories might be the key to who gets to tell stories. Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement that ‘the medium is the message’ understood that the medium will influence the ways a story is told, received and shared. But access to the medium is not equal. This needs to be continually brought to light. If we continue to determine, and arguably dictate, what are or are not accepted or valued modes of storytelling, then we limit, and risk erasure of, stories and experiences that are able to be shared. Transmedia storytelling, as an industry, field and group of practitioners, tends to champion style over substance.

Storytelling: identity, empathy and resistance

Telling stories might be the single best way to share information and influence behaviour. Recent findings in neuroscience reveal that ‘narratives offer intrinsic benefits in each of the four main steps of processing and retaining information: motivation and interest, allocating cognitive resources, elaboration, and transfer into long term memory’ (Glaser, Garsoffky, and Schwan 2009, 429–430). This means that stories and narratives encourage us to seek more information, think harder about what we are being told, consider what it means and how we might react in similar circumstances and to remember the information for longer. In the fields of health and science communication, researchers have concluded that stories and narratives are effective as a mode of communication in ways that other forms of information sharing are not (see Dahlstrom 2014; Davidson 2017; Houston et al. 2011; Shelby and Ernst 2013). Even before the ‘narrative turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, the centrality of story and narrative in illuminating our shared experiences and providing insight into the experiences of others had been recognised. In The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt argued that storytelling has the ability to transform personal experiences into public meaning; narrative is also widely acknowledged as a key means through which people organise and make sense of reality (Fisher 1984; Polk-inghorne 1988). First Nations and Indigenous peoples have known this since forever. Inuit communities teach their children about everything from why it is important to wear a hat in the cold to how to regulate your emotions through storytelling; Indigenous Australians have shared their expert knowledge of land care and sustainable practices through storytelling over tens of thousands of years. While stories need to be compelling and engaging, it would behove us to remember that they can be more than profit-generating entertainment.

The ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences contributed to the recognition of stories as important mechanisms for researchers to understand the contexts and nuances of the environments they are studying. Approaches that are embedded within the lived experiences of subjects demonstrate a new emphasis on human agency to understanding broader social conditions. For any community or cohort who have been excluded, whether deliberately or accidently, stories have an important role to play in positive social change. The invisibility and absence of voice experienced by these groups have consequences. For Rankin:

[o]ften their very last asset is their story. It is often valuable, because it acts like a canary in the coalmine. If told in the right way, and placed with the right audiences, these stories can illuminate things we need to know about ourselves and things we need to shift as a society.

(2016, 35)

These stories also enable intended audiences to see ‘different and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning, to bring these layers into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’ (Andrews, Squire, and Tamboukou 2013, 2). So, personal narratives represent the building blocks for public understanding (Davis 2002). These approaches acknowledge that having the opportunity to tell their own stories empowers individuals and communities, and that solutions for positive change occur from within communities. Big hART, an arts and social change organisation which developed one of the case studies in the final chapter of this book, has as their motto: It’s harder to hurt someone when you know their story. Nevertheless, stories do not exist in a vacuum and the purpose of many community storytelling or social research projects is to bring those stories into the public discourse and to provide a dialogue between the storytellers and audience. As Davis argues:

The storytelling process, as a social transaction, engages people in communicative relationships. Through identification and co-creation of story, the storyteller and reader/listener create an affective bond and a sense of solidarity: told and re-told ‘my story’ becomes ‘our story’.

(2002, 19)

A global shift has occurred around how societies design and deliver human services for marginalised cohorts, which is centred on creating with end users rather than for end users (Bason 2010). This requires a fundamental change in how we recognise and value the voices and experiences of individuals and groups who are rarely heard. Story and narratives are acknowledged as powerful tools for changing dominant perceptions of marginalised groups, and personal narratives are important mechanisms for creating social change and promoting social inclusion. They can do this by building empathy and creating understanding across difference (Gottschall 2012; Jackson 2013; Simmons 2006). Well-crafted and strategically shared stories can encourage shifts in attitudes across diverse groups in society, illuminate meaning out of patterns, reveal the universal in the individual and create an alternative vision for future actions (Davidson 2017). Community-centred and community-led storytelling is generally understood as a useful means through which under-represented communities can advocate for change, but a deep understanding of the intersections between the unique properties of stories and the affordances of various methods through which to communicate effectively with targeted audiences has yet to be developed. In Australia, we have witnessed the potential for storytelling and personal narratives to shift the national consciousness and direct new policy settings in the cases of the Stolen Generation, the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Childhood Sexual Abuse (and more recently into the Financial and Residential Aged Care sectors) and drawing attention to the day-to-day challenges of drought-affected remote communities (Adkins and Hancox 2014; Vivienne and Burgess 2013). Many of the facts about the abuses of power, the neglect and lack of assistance associated with each of these issues were well known, sometimes for decades, but it was not until the stories of survivors and their families made it into the public consciousness was there widespread demand for justice and change.

The 2017 Australian Government Productivity Commission report into improving human services and policy found that understanding the population and the services they need is essential to making sound decisions. Population analysis, coupled with on-the-ground evidence drawn from service providers and others with local experience or an understanding of particular cohorts, needs to be used to build a more detailed picture of the needs of people experiencing hardship, along with considering co-design processes to improve the chance of successful outcomes (20–21). This process of co-creating equitable policy and futures with those most affected must involve stories and storytelling, not only data and information gathering. For profoundly marginalised groups, being asked to share or receive information through formal processes used widely by government and non-government organisations can be seen as suspicious, intrusive or inappropriate in language or format. Many organisa-tional forms of gathering and sharing information, such as focus groups, surveys and interviews, inadvertently silence already marginalised voices. They are also imbued with inherent barriers like English language proficiency, confidence and tacit knowledge. Unfortunately, these methods are often the key means of designing services or developing policy. A number of the projects presented over the course of this book dismantle these existing frameworks and reconfigure ways of gathering and sharing information based on the needs and experiences of the creators and end users. This is delivered in conjunction with an inclusive and holistic approach using new media, in an effort to identify the most accessible and meaningful methods of communication. Arts-based engagement methods are recognised as an important set of approaches through which to promote social inclusion and justice. It uses a process of engaging marginalised individuals in creating and sharing stories designed to initiate social change (Boydell et al. 2012).

Stories by rather than about marginalised groups also enable us to see ‘differ-ent and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning, to bring them into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’ (Andrews, Squire, and Tamboukou 2013, 2). In Narratives, Health and Healing, Harter, Japp, and Beck (2008, 3) maintain that ‘narrative is a fundamental way of giving meaning to experience’. It is also capable of giving voice and meaning to the experiences of groups and communities who have previously only been represented through research, in the media or government policy by others rather than determining their own forms of representation. The belief that stories have an important role to play in social change has an abiding place in many organisations and social movements.

Polkinghorne (1988, 18) suggested that ‘narrative is a meaning making structure that organizes events and human actions into a whole, thereby attributing significance to individual actions and events according to their effect on the whole’ and, as such, it privileges plot structure as a central feature. This emphasis is generally considered integral to narrative and suggests a need for a linear and coherent order of events for a story to be effective in communicating with an audience. However, stories and narratives have multiple purposes, and in some instances, a story can be represented through various media and in abstract ways to convey the experiences of the storytellers and to engage the audience in a way that ‘stimulates the audience’s creative participation and identification and invites them to supply what is unspecified yet required’ (Davis 2002, 16).

Transmedia storytelling allows for the creation of a series of individual stories in an effort to reflect the multiplicity of voices and heterogeneous experiences in any environment. Narrative research and praxis focus on ‘more holistic research processes while sharing mutual responsibilities to enhance understanding of local phenomenon and explore the transformative possibilities for improving local context’ (Blodgett et al. 2011, 523). Stories used in this way do not promise widespread understanding and resolution of social issues or inequality simply because a narrative has been created and shared by those directly affected. Rather, they signal that there is more to be done and more to be understood, and these changes need to be established from within those local contexts. Andrews, Squire, and Tamboukou (2013, 4) describe poststructural-ist, postmodern, psychoanalytic and deconstructionist approaches to narrative research as having assumed that multiple, disunified subjectivities were involved in the production and understanding of narratives, rather than singular, agentic storytellers and hearers. They also assert the practice was preoccupied with the social formations shaping language and subjectivity. In this tradition, the storyteller does not tell the story, so much as they are told by it.

Whenever we talk about storytelling, particularly in a Western context, we are also touching on issues of authorship. Transmedia storytelling presents a range of sometimes conflicting approaches to authorship, but, most importantly to the arguments and examples in this book, it allows for diffusion and horizontal concepts of authorship, along with ‘a dynamic and participatory process, where the lines between the author and the audience are blurred’ (Spanoudakis et al. 2015, 108). Before exploring these possibilities further, it is also important to understand that this approach is far less common than is sometimes touted in the rhetoric around transmedia. The possibility of some level of community authorship is certainly intrinsic to transmedia storytelling, but its practice is far rarer. Mostly, transmedia stories have been designed to allow as much participation and engagement as is deemed necessary and this is tightly controlled by the creators. Interaction, participation and engagement are complex and problematic terms and have been co-opted to describe activities from the most basic actions to move through a story to genuine collaboration and co-creation. This chapter explores how creators and audiences relate to one another in transmedia storytelling, the capabilities designed into the story to facilitate this relationship, and why it is important. Srivastava expands on the way transmedia storytelling ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Stories everywhere
• 2 Pervasive hope and place: Welcome to Pine Point and Firestorm
• 3 Making worlds: participating in imaginary places
• 4 Embodied and uncanny places: It Must Have Been Dark By Then and Breathe
• 5 That place and those people: documenting from the outside
• 6 From the inside: situated stories and representation
• Conclusion
• Index