Reconceptualising Digital Storytelling: Thinking Through Audiovisual Inquiry

Drawing from longitudinal research with newcomer communities in Ireland, anthropological literature, and film theory and practice, Alexandra argues for a re-conceptualisation of the participatory media genre of Digital Storytelling (DS). Rather than understanding images and sound as “secondary concerns” disconnected from broader filmic practices, the chapter places DS in conversation with documentary and ethnographic arts. Arguing for the importance of both the audiovisual artefact and the intensively collaborative process that facilitates its creation, the finished artefact is conceptualised as an “embodied object”. Through inquiry, exchange and montage, this object is imbued with the knowledge, longings, and sensorial experience of a particular moment in the emergent practitioner’s life. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the connective tissue between DS and ethnographic and documentary film and video.