Abstract
Digital storytelling for business planning has the narrative mode and the logical scientific mode. This chapter explores how the structure of the digital storytelling work affects its effectiveness and how the storyteller's reflection influences the improvement of the work. It is critical to consider the structure, consistency, and balance between the narrative and the analytical part, especially the link from a contrast between the initial situation and obstruction to key success factors. In addition, three types of perspective taking make digital storytelling effective: 1) an audience perceives a storyteller's perspective, 2) a storyteller refines his/her perspective, and 3) a storyteller perceives an audience's perspective. When the storyteller deepens his/her own perspective and is aware of others' different perspectives, the audience could find some essential commonality between the episodes of the story and the audience's experience.
TopIntroduction
Digital Storytelling
Digital storytelling means a short digital work that combines narration and visual-auditory material, such as photographs, music, and movies, produced by an individual as his or her own story1. The origin of digital storytelling was a kind of democratization movement of visual art on the West Coast of the United States in the 1970s–1980s. In the 1990s, the movement developed through the appearance of low-cost and easy-to-use equipment, such as personal computers, digital cameras, and the Internet. In 1994, the San Francisco Center for Digital Media was founded and developed into the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in 1998 (Lambert, 2013). Although a virtual reality game in which players develop their own stories with a character is also called digital storytelling (Murray, 1998), this chapter addresses digital storytelling following the CDS’s movement.
Lambert, one of the founders of the CDS, pointed out that digital storytelling has seven components: self-revelatory, personal or first person voice, scenes of a lived experiences of the storyteller, photos, soundtracks, short-length (under five minutes) and simple designs, and the storyteller’s ownership of the entire process and distribution (Lambert, 2013). As Lambert (2013) noted, the storyteller’s private life need not always be revealed, but telling a storyteller’s non-fiction expressed in the first person is recommended because it is the easiest way to deeply reflect himself or herself.
Regardless of whether or not a story is the storyteller’s nonfiction, digital storytelling is oriented to be subjective, personal experience-based, emotional, sensory, and self-reflective in general. Through these aspects, digital storytelling contrasts with the ideal of logical scientific presentation in academic society.
Hartley and McWilliam (2009) added the definition of an element: that digital storytelling is a workshop-based practice called a story circle, although the workshop basis is an implicit premise from the beginning of the digital storytelling movement. In a story circle, participants not only learn how to create works but also communicate with each other during the process of developing stories. A story must be told to someone; thus, members of a story circle function as both author of their stories and audiences of other members’ stories. In addition, if the workshop has a specific social theme, such as an environmental problem, digital storytelling can assist the social movement by sharing members’ consciousness.
Digital storytelling has been applied to a variety of fields, not only visual arts but also a new style of media, education, therapy, and various social movements in public health care, social services, and others. Digital storytelling has spread not only in the United States but also in countries in Europe, Oceania, North America, Asia, Africa, and South America (Hartley & McWilliam, 2009). In Japan, where the workshop for this research was held, workshop-based practices by educational institutes and non-profit organizations have been observed since the 2000 (Nishioka, 2014).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Expected Result Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which the expected result from fulfilling the business method in the method unit is forecasted casually.
Resource Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which the business planner’s internal resources such as human network, existing facilities, and financial situation are presented.
Evidence Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which objective evidences for examining the hypotheses in the factor unit are indicated.
Narrative Mode: A cognition style of human being to understand something through an interpretation process advocated by Bruner. Interpretation depends upon the specific context and personal and/or communal history.
Logical Scientific Mode: A cognition style of human being to explain something causally advocated by Bruner. Interpretation does not depend upon the specific contextual setting.
Narrative: A sequence of events told by people with oral communication, text, movie, comic, digital presentation, and other devices. A narrative is open to interpretation for the storyteller and the audience.
Element Explanation Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which an unfamiliar or a peculiar business element such as a product, a method, an environmental factor is explained in detail.
Factor Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which the key success factors of the business are derived as the hypotheses objectively and analytically.
Obstruction Unit: A scene(s) of the narrative part, in which a character encounters a trouble or shortage of a critical thing.
Analytical Part: A part of the digital storytelling that was told in the logical scientific mode. In this chapter, the researchers identified the analytical part on whether it was told objectively and scientifically (i.e., from a point of view of God).
Method Unit: A unit of the analytical part, in which the business methods to satisfy the key success factors are proposed concretely.
Narrative Part: A part of the digital storytelling that was told in the narrative mode. In this chapter, the researchers identified the narrative part on whether it was told from the viewpoint of a personal character (including the storyteller).
Solution Unit: A scene(s) of the narrative part, in which a character struggles and solves problems that were found in the obstruction unit.
New Situation Unit: A scene(s) of the narrative part, in which a character finds a newly appeared situation after the problems were solved in the solution unit.
Digital Storytelling: A short digital work that combines narration and visual-auditory material, such as photographs, music, and movies, produced by an individual as his or her own story.
Story of “Something Like You”: A story making audiences sense some essential commonality with their experience.
Perspective Taking: A guess of other people’s state of mind, in which one person perceives another person’s viewpoint and learns another person’s thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Old Situation Unit: A scene(s) of the narrative part, which represents the initial or the ordinary situation before a character encounters an obstruction.