Storytelling
Launched in January 2014, the Storytelling and Digital-Age Civics webinar series brought together civically active youth, educators, and activists to talk about storytelling as a practice that bridges cultural and civic/political engagement.
Coordinated by Media, Activism, and Participatory Politics (MAPP) in collaboration with Youth Radio, Connected Learning, and USC’s Media Arts + Practice, the series builds on MAPP’s definition of storytelling as a shared activity in which individuals and communities contribute to the telling, retelling, and remixing of narratives through various media channels, such as photography, blogs, books, performance, and videos.
Spread over four weeks and organized around the lifecycle of a story, webinar participants discussed how political narratives are created, produced, spread and recontextualized in digital spaces through “digital afterlife.”
The series was moderated by Derek Williams from Youth Radio, the Peabody Award-winning youth-driven production company headquartered in Oakland, California, and diverse webinar participants represented a broad range of people, groups, and practices, which encouraged fruitful discussions about the affordances and challenges of using digital media for civic action. For more information about the participants in each webinar, visit: “Finding Your Story,” “Making Your Story,” “Spreading Your Story,” and “Considering Your Story’s Afterlife.”
The MAPP team also published highlights from this series on Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, if you are interested in some of the behind the scenes action or want to see key moments from Webinars 1 & 2 and Webinars 3 & 4. If you are looking for an overview of the series as a whole, MAPP Project Director Sangita Shresthova also published “Learn to Listen. Really Listen: ‘Storytelling and Digital Age Civics’ Series Artists and Activists Share Seven Key Insights” on Digital IS.
Click below to explore the conversations we had through the Storytelling and Digital-Age Civics webinar series.
