Interactive Documentary Practices as an Emerging Tool for Development Communication

Introduction

The documentary has always been a source of critical social expression. A documentary acts as a catalyst for social change in society. It originated in 1930 based on the technologies of The Lumiere Brothers and Thomas Edison. The internet is fostering conditions that have transformed the notions of the documentary form. The new genre of documentaries is using a participatory and interactive approach. The interactive documentary can be looked at as a cross-media innovation in the present time. It is an evolved model for communication that is multidirectional as the viewers play the roles of both consumer and producer in a social activism environment. These i-docs not only inform, educate, and raise issues in the society but also mobilize citizens to act after getting involved with the interactive documentary. Interactive documentary enabled theorists to reimagine the role of narrative in films. Philosophical approach has been adopted by Paul Ricoeur to understand the importance of narrative (Reeder 2020).

The internet has changed its position from being a platform of secondary delivery for videos and films to becoming a fundamental platform for producing them. The smartphone-driven world that gives us access to content on the move in a matter of seconds is no longer a set of static pages instead hosts dynamic and highly networked content that is created by not only specialists but for any individual on the digital space. In such a socio-cultural and technologically networked environment, the people who are interested in information and facts-based documentaries are moving towards new media as an upcoming multimedia platform rather than watching broadcast television and films that were earlier dominated by traditional media-based documentary filmmakers. But the new emerging form of interactive documentary filmmaking involves interactivity that has changed the form of this medium; it has changed from a linear narrative to a non-linear narrative form. It has become a more collaborative form than an authored form. It is no longer only audio-video based medium but has become a multimedia based medium for documentaries. The emerging new terminologies like trans-media docs, web-docs, docu-games, alternate reality docs have emerged in the interactive documentary form of filmmaking. These forms are different from traditional ones in terms of engagement, participation, interaction, viewer involvement in the narrative, and content control by the creator.

Interactive documentaries are relational entities because they are interdependent on components like technology, culture, and society. The interactive nature of these documentaries requires participation that makes the user an internal part of the system. This conversational interactivity where the user acts and reacts is the core of the interactive documentary. The research will assess the effectiveness of this form as a tool for development communication and understand how the audience participates, shapes, and gets shaped by interactive documentaries. The research explores the unique characteristics of interactive documentaries that can help to develop it into an effective tool for both social advocacy groups and nonprofits to reach their targeted community. It will help in developing campaigns to create social change in society.