In this module, students will acquire an advanced understanding of stories created with digital media as crafted across diverse contexts, from advertising to entertainment to data visualization. You will examine various case studies of creative digital stories to understand whether and how their telling is effective, and how stories and meaning are shaped using Web platforms (podcasts, YouTube, Vine, Instagram), social media, text adventure games, interactive dramas, computational fictions, mobile media, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, transmedia and other forms of digital media. The narrative impulse is a universal one: in this module, you will learn how that impulse plays out in today’s shifting technological landscape.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
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A | Autumn Term 2022-23 |
Week 2: Introduction: redefining the relationship between story and audience (open source authoring tool communities, personal game authorship (Twine); redefining the relationship between collaborators; developments towards generative storytelling; re-shaping screen-based practices of storytelling; new processes and creative workflows
Week 3: Transmedia storytelling: interactive serial online and TV content, cross-media projects
Week 4: Storytelling on/with social media: stories on and using social media (Instagram/Snapchat/Twitter/Facebook)
Week 5: Ambient/spatial/AR storytelling: “walking simulators”; projects that use locative-aware narratives; mobile storytelling
Week 6: Immersive/360/VR storytelling
Week 7: Live/performative storytelling
Week 8: Non-fiction storytelling
Week 9: AI/algorithmic storytelling: projects that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithmic writing practices
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Students will receive written feedback on coursework assessments using a proforma identifying key marking criteria and marks awarded for each section of the assessment. This will be available within 20 working days of submission, except in exceptional circumstances which will be communicated to the students.
Alexander, Bryan, The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media, Praeger, 2017.
Dunford, Mark and Tricia Jenkins, Digital Storytelling: Form and Content, Palgrave, 2017.
Gitner, Seth, Multimedia Storytelling for Digital Communicators in a Multiplatform World, Routledge, 2015.
Klanten, Robert, Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language, Die Gestalten Verlag, 2011.
Knaflic, Cole Nussbaumer, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals, Wiley, 2015.
McCandless David, Information is Beautiful, Collins, 2012.
Miller, Carolyn Handler, Digital Storytelling: A creator’s guide to interactive entertainment, Focal Press, 2008.
Penn, W.S., Storytelling in the Digital Age, Palgrave, 2013.
Quesenbery, Whitney, and Kevin Brooks, Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design, Rosenfeld Media, 2010.