Why make digital storytelling? What are the benefits? We are trying to find theoretical and practical answers in this serie, where we ask the question: what is it good for?

“To tell others who you are can play an important role in the contruction of an agentive self.”

The point is taken from the paper “Creating an Agentive Self”, a paper based on fieldstudies of a digital storytelling program for at-risk youth called DUSTY – Digital Underground StoryTelling for Youth.

Dealing with at-risk youth, the authors aim to ”illustrate how alternative spaces for learning can sometimes effectively support adolenscents´interests in literacy and foster their developing sense of agency.”

With a solid theoretical framework based on Miller (1994), Bruner (1994), Bakhtin (1981) and Baumann & Briggs (1990) they draw the conclusion that a digital storytelling program helped two students ”to articulate pivotal moments in their lives and to assume agentive stances toward their present identities, circumstances and futures.”

Reference:
Crafting an Agentive Self. Case studies on Digital Storytelling, by Glynda Hull and Mira-Lisa Katz