When we talk about digital storytelling two definitions comes to my mind. In general, I tend to describe it as a movement and practice, however I recently encountered a more detailed description of the fields of digital storytelling.

Professor John Hartley from Queensland University of Technology in Australia outlines the following elements as parts of ‘digital storytelling’:

• As a form, it combines the direct, emotional charge of confessional disclosure, the authenticity of the documentary, and the simple elegance of the format – it is a digital sonnet, or haiku.

• As a practice, digital storytelling combines tuition of the individual with new narrative devices for multiplatform digital publishing across hybrid sites.

• As a movement, it represents one of the first genuine amalgamations of expert and consumer/user-led creativity.

• And as an elaborated textual system created for the new media ecology, digital storytelling challenges the traditional distinction between professional and amateur production, reworking the producer/consumer relationship. It is a contribution to (and test of) contemporary thinking about media literacy and participation, storytelling formats, and content distribution. (Hartley, in press)

So I must admit, that my definition of digital storytelling was quite short. Digital storytelling represents more than a new media practice; it also includes an emergent form and an activist/community movement.