The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media [Hardcover]

Bryan Alexander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0313387494 | ISBN-13: 978-0313387494

Digital storytelling uses new media tools and platforms to tell stories. The second wave of digital storytelling started in the 1990s with the rise of popular video production, then progressed in the new century to encompass newer, social media technologies. The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media is the first book that gathers these new, old, and emergent practices in one place, and provides a historical context for these methods.

Author Bryan Alexander explains the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling, weaving images, text, audio, video, and music together. Alexander draws upon the latest technologies, insights from the latest scholarship, and his own extensive experience to describe the narrative creation process with personal video, blogs, podcasts, digital imagery, multimedia games, social media, and augmented reality—all platforms that offer new pathways for creativity, interactivity, and self-expression.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an essential guide for those of us trying to figure out how to use these cool new tools to make a real dent in the world around us--Bryan Alexander is out on an important frontier."

(

Bill McKibben, Founder, 350.org; Author, Educator, Environmentalist; Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College

)

Book Description

People have been creating digital stories since before the Web began, but only recently have so many powerful mediums for sharing these stories become available to the general population. Today's digital storytelling is not just for tech-savvy individuals; anyone with a desire to express their creativity can learn to use modern technology to share their experiences.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: Praeger (April 7, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0313387494
• ISBN-13: 978-0313387494
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm writing this bioblurb near a wood-burning stove and surrounded by cats, typing into one end of a network stretching down the side of a mountain.

I'm a researcher and homesteader. Research is about how teaching and learning change during the digital technology revolution. That means social media, storytelling, mobile devices, futurism, ubiquitous computing, futurism, life imitating science fiction, and liberal education, plus a heap of Gothic sensibility.

Homesteading: our family lives on top of Vermont's Green Mountains, half-way off the grid, raising chickens and goats, heating by wood, and somehow getting broadband in the house. Children, wife, and other creatures make up this snowy world.

Across the continuum formed by those two extremes, I write for both academic and general readers. "Write" is actually a mixture of blogs, a book, Twitter, talks, and classes.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The new go-to guide for digital storytellers May 12, 2011

By J. Scott Shipman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is cross posted at: [...]

Bryan Alexander's The New Digital Storytelling, Creating New Narratives With New Media is an excellent, highly readable, and comprehensive treatment of storytelling in our digital world. Dr. Alexander manages in 230 pages of text to capture the universe of available methods, processes, resources and tools available to storytellers, as of 2010. His 36 pages of notes and bibliography includes an exhaustive list of websites and sources used.

Dr. Alexander aimed his book at "creators and would-be practitioners," storytellers looking for new digital ideas, to include teachers, marketers, and communications managers. Whatever your background, he assures in the introduction, "herein you will find examples to draw on, practical uses to learn from, principles to apply, and some creative inspiration." I can't speak for those in the target audience, but as one with but a casual interest in storytelling, I can say Dr. Alexander delivered! Over the course of the couple of days of reading, I came up with about a half-dozen ideas and discovered my MacBook Pro has a lot more under the hood than I ever appreciated or used.

That said, Dr. Alexander warns that his book is not a "hands-on manual" on the tech media discussed. In fact, he assumes the reader will not "be a technologist" and the material is presented accordingly. He says:

"The New Digital Storytelling straddles the awkward yet practical divide between production and consumption, critique and project creation."

The book is divided into four parts:

Part I Storytelling: A Tale of Two Generations

In Chapter 1 Dr. Alexander provides an unambiguous meaning to digital storytelling: "Simply put, it is telling stories with digital technologies...." The medium providing this review to you is my digital story about the book. But that is just the beginning; just about every digital device imaginable is being used to tell stories; blogs, social media, videos, and even in Twitter's 140 character limit, storytelling genres are emerging [readers at zenpudit.com will recall Charles Cameron's use of Twitter feeds following UBL's death]. As Alexander points out, "no sooner do we invent a medium than do we try to tell stories with it."

In Chapters 2 & 3, Dr. Alexander provides a history of digital storytelling in two parts; part one is what he calls "the first wave." From foundations in the 70's and 80's (his reference to the 1983 movie War Games brought back memories) to the evolution and importance of hypertext. Alexander asks, "How do hypertexts work as digital stories? Users--reader--experience hypertext as an unusual storytelling platform. We navigate along lexia ("multiple readable chunks") picking and choosing links to follow." This point truly "clicked" for me; one of the pleasures of reading zenpundit.com is the ubiquity of supporting links and how sometimes these links lead to unexpected, but valuable adventures. Often I've landed in a place I would never have found if not for the first "story." Alexander writes that Web 2.0 has allowed for "the ability to create content for zero software cost is historically significant, and now par for the course." He points out with the ubiquity of hardware (both PCs and mobile devices) and the social element (social media, for example) a means of of delivery and an architecture are in place where potential storytellers have a low barrier to entry--to get their story out. Alexander includes gaming devices (mobile and console) in the review of the Web 2.0 phenomena.

Part II New Platforms for Tales and Telling

Chapter 4 is a comprehensive review of Web 2.0 storytelling and the fragility of systems existing today, but perhaps gone tomorrow. Dr. Alexander covers distinct types of blogs used in sharing stories; blogs are ubiquitous and the barriers to entry negligible. He covers epistolary novels and diary/journal-based stories and provides numerous examples. One example was News from 1930, which "posts selections from each day's Wall Street Journal" during the early days of the Great Depression--in essence, a blog as a realtime history lesson. But as we know, the blogosphere is bigger than history, there also exists a market for various fictional stories which include reader interaction/collaboration. Also included are examples of character blogging (as Alexander notes: "Bloggers are characters") where personalities are revealed over time in a serial nature. Twitter has developed into a unique format for storytelling, forcing the user to pack as much as possible in precious few words/characters. Wikis, social images and Facebook are also covered and explained in ways that made me think about "how" I use social media.

Chapter 5 covers in detail social media storytelling...and this is one of my favorite chapters. Alexander explains podcasts in a way that was accessible and in a way that made me want to "do" a podcast! A podcast is limited to audio, but a web video places a whole new spin on our ability to digitally tell our stories. Chapter 5 is rich in resources and insight.

In chapters 6 and 7 Alexander discusses gaming and storytelling. This may be the part of the book that was over my head (I'm dubious of the real utility of "gamification" in a meaningful/productive way). One sentence did jump off the page: "One key aspect of game-based storytelling is the immersion of the player in the story's environment." Indeed, "intimacy" is an enormous missing ingredient in more than storytelling and absolutely necessary in proficiency in just about any endeavor. One other sentence made a big impression: "Children also learn a deep secret about art, which is that the less detailed the representation of a character, the easier it is for us to identify with him or her." I believe guys like the internet Oatmeal guy and the creator of Zen's recent post have figured out this phenomena isn't limited to children.

Part III Combinatorial Storytelling; or, The Dawn of New Narrative Forms

Chapters 8 through 11 covers the networked book, mobile devices, and alternate reality games. The networked book resonated with me because of something from my distant career on submarines (early 80's); we would write a story where periodically storytellers would add a sentence and half to an evolving text. The results were always amusing and never predictable. Networked books sound very similar to our collaborative efforts 30 years ago, but with the ubiquity of digital tools, opportunities abound. For example "transmedia storytelling," where "story content is distributed across multiple sites and media; the movie trilogy, an anthology of animated films, comics, computer games, a massively multiplayer online game, Web content, and additional DVD content." This dispersion of story content and the variety of venues allows users a more "immersive experience"---the intimacy Alexander described earlier. Mobile devices are literally changing just about every aspect of our world from political meetings, classrooms, clinics "now that those present can hit the Web for fact checking or peer support." An excellent recent example was the squashed attempt of the United States Naval Institute's board to change the organization's mission. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn were used to get the word out to members who took action. New tablet devices will continue to drive this phenomena. Alexander's treatment of alternate reality games revealed "worlds" created with our world by game participants of such products as Second Life.

Part IV Building Your Story

In the final chapters, Dr. Alexander provides example of "how to" build a digital story, using the classic Center for Digital Storytelling workshop model. For me, this was the most thought-provoking section. The description of how a workshop is conducted, the questions used to prompt creative/insightful "story-able" thought is worth the price of the book. Alexander inventories the software available for audio, images, video editing, publication, concept mapping, and other production tools. This inventory of tools describes the appropriateness of each with respect to the level of experience of the storyteller. Digital storytelling in education is covered in Chapter 14 and is a rich resource for parents and educators who want to leverage the digital world.

The New Digital Storytelling should be the standard guide for anyone who wants to use all the new digital gadgets available to tell their story; this book is an excellent one-stop resource. I plan to use what I've learned in the expansion of my family tree history to an A/V platform and have already built a to-do list to get started.

One closing thought; the irony isn't lost that this "book" about digital storytelling is made of paper, glue, and ink. I can only imagine what an adventure this would be if presented digitally where all the links were connected...a digital story on how to tell digital stories.

The New Digital Storytelling comes with my highest recommendation. Get this book, use those tools, and tell your stories. Read more ›

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, simply brilliant May 30, 2011

By mgb

Format:Hardcover

This comprehensive overview of digital storytelling is brilliant, simply brilliant. Bryan Alexander's distinctive blend of literary and technological expertise contributes to his engaging description of multimedia narratives and related topics. As a professor aiming to enhance students' visual and digital literacy, I found this text to be inspiring and provocative. Almost every chapter as well as numerous references in the book's exhaustive bibliography prompted me while reading to conceptualize new class exercises, assignments, and course objectives. And as a former full-time writer, editor, and marketing consultant, I can imagine innumerable ways that Alexander's ideas may serve as catalysts to innovative marketing and promotional campaigns. Highly recommended for teachers, scholars, entrepreneurs, communications and other professionals, and anyone interested in exploring the unparalleled potential of digital storytelling to further countless pursuits.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Intro to Digital Storytelling May 13, 2011

By bryantt

Format:Hardcover

Most readers will enjoy the review of platforms not often considered when discussing digital storytelling including games, augmented reality, and mobile devices. Combines discussion of good storytelling with current technologies very well. Technologists will appreciate the chapter on organizing and structuring a digital storytelling workshop.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Terrific Resource Packed With Examples January 10, 2012

By Trent Hergenrader

Format:Hardcover

I received this book as holiday gift and read it in its entirety while flying to and from the MLA conference in Seattle. As a college instructor who has been experimenting with gaming and networked writing with English students, I found this to be an invaluable resource. In fact, there were so many intriguing examples of web-based storytelling projects that I wound up springing for the in-flight WiFi just so I could hunt them down on my iPad. Granted, this book would have been better as an e-book with active hyperlinks to eliminate the flipping back and forth between the notes, references, and Internet content, but to marginalize what the book *does* offer because of this shortcoming seems misguided.

Also, there's a perfectly good reason why Alexander spends so much time talking about gaming: game culture is pervasive for high school and college-aged students. This is not a waste of time as some reviewers seem to think but rather provides a timely and much needed collection of resources to help instructors incorporate game-based methods of digital storytelling into their teaching practice. As someone who has used games in college courses with great success, the discussion of game narratives is essential as its influence on higher education will likely continue to grow.

If you want a how-to guide or a purely theoretical treatise, this is neither--although the book does provide a detailed chapter on how to get started and is theoretically well-grounded. However, if you want a book that provides a ton of examples of how digital storytelling is emerging in fascinating ways, it's well worth the (admittedly hefty) price tag.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ur Text of DS October 8, 2011

By Sandra M. Jensen

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the Ur book, go-to-manual, one stop shopping digital storytelling resource. The bibliography and Chapter Notes alone are worth the price of admission--which reminds me to say I sure wish I could have ordered it up for my iPad2 Kindle ap, so all those hotlinks would be live...

There's lots to appreciate in this book. The history of DS was useful to me. Even though I lived through it, a comprehensive overview reminds me what events were truly most innovative. I wanted to know where DS is being taught and what degrees are available, and those are all there, too. As a teacher, I needed to know the assessment criteria for DS classroom projects--no problem!

And on it goes. Quite simply, if you are involved in the intellectual conversations going on about DS, this book is a must-have.