What is “digital storytelling”?

You might think that a website devoted to digital storytelling as a form of faith formation would be able to answer this question easily — and in some ways, of course, we can. But the bigger reason for having a post that seeks to name (or in this case, define) a term is because so many other organizations and individuals are using that term to mean so many different things.

In the case of this website, we want to highlight the “storytelling” part of that phrase. Digital storytelling is first, and foremost, about telling stories. We create and share stories which grow from our own faith journeys, from the shared journeys of our religious communities, and from the world all around us. They become digital stories as we add photos, video, music, and other digital elements to them, and when we share them using digital tools available on the Net.

So the “story’s the thing” — and that makes us particularly sensitive to creating contexts in which we can come to voice our stories. It also makes us care deeply about how we tell a story, and along the way that means we’re learning a lot about the digital tools that support such creation and sharing.

Much of where we start from grows out of the work of the Center for Digital Storytelling, and they have wonderful resources available on the Net. But we are also deeply involved in faith formation, and that means that there are other important elements to what we do that go beyond CDS. We’ll name those in another post!

In the meantime you can find scholarly papers in the resources section which further explore this term.