This project is a site-specific ethnographic study of a culture around a community water tank that serves as a value-driven piece of architecture and has become an inconspicuous tourist attraction in the city of Växjö due to its peculiar acoustic property. At the onset, I draw parallels between an ancient underground temple called the Hypogeum located in Malta, where the physical dimensions of the space similarly shaped sensorial experiences in more nuanced ways than conventional architecture of its time. The core of my work here has three explorative angles. One, where I embark on interdisciplinary research approaches, to conduct field studies and investigate ways to empirically test how the physical properties of spaces shape cognitive impressions. A crucial need to express spirituality within an academic framework is proposed and a method of non-intentional design (NID) is introduced as my driving process for the study. Two, as a digital story, I conduct interviews and make the culture of this space visible to the public through an instagram account called #echoingawareness. And three, I present some of my experience building this slow and steady relation with the local municipality with a proposal to provide space on the urban planning table for bottom-up approaches where voices from such sacred spaces can be made more inclusive. I hope this could be a useful resource as a transdisciplinary study for future planning of urban architecture and design.

Extreme right-wing violence has increased in recent years. Social media technologies and self-made media platforms have allowed extreme right-wing groups to create and push narratives online. These narratives have inspired others to act outside of the digital world and commit horrendous [GH1] attacks targeting minorities. These narratives are also published in a hybrid media system where audience-driven content is favored by social media, rather than objective and correct content. Therefore, it is important to understand the use of digital storytelling and social media technologies in a political context to push political views and stories online. This thesis studied how The Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) uses digital storytelling strategies to build and push narratives on Twitter and self-made media platforms. This was conducted through a network and qualitative content analysis. 400 000 tweets were collected using Twitter’s API from 1/1-2022 to 31/3-2022. The outcome indicates that NRM dilutes its hateful narrative on Twitter but uses digital storytelling to evoke interest in the movement and combines it with influential hashtags according to the network analysis to force users onto self-made media platforms. This is when the narrative changes to the extreme. The study concludes that NRM uses social media in combination with its digital storytelling to attract users from traditional political spaces on Twitter through intriguing storytelling as part of an initiation process to attract new members and visitors to their self-made media platforms. Further research is suggested to be done on media ecology concerning self-made media platforms to gain further insight into how the platforms affect each other and the storytelling in the hybrid media system.

Denna uppsats syftar att undersöka hur, i digital storytelling, visuell retorik används för att förmedla känslor och skapa empati i hjälporganisationskampanjer. Uppsatsen är en fallstudie där Rädda Barnens virala kampanjfilm Most Shocking Second a Day från 2014 analyseras. Valet av material grundas i filmens virala spridning och valet av metod baseras på behovet av djupgående kvalitativ forskning inom forskningsområdet digital storytelling. Kampanjfilmen analyseras utifrån en retorisk trestegsmodell där fokus läggs på visualiseringen av mänskligt lidande och hur detta visualiseras genom främst patosargument. Detta med grund i tidigare forskning som undersöker kampanjer av hjälporganisationer och digital storytelling samt med stöd i teori om visuell retorik och visualisering av lidande och semiotik. Resultatet visar att genom digital storytelling, igenkänningsattribut och retoriska troper visualiserar kampanjfilmen mänskligt lidande genom patos. / This essay aims to look at how, in digital storytelling, visual rhetoric is used to evoke emotion and create empathy in campaigns for NGOs. The essay is a case study where Save the Children's campaign film Most Shocking Second a Day from 2014 is analyzed. The film was chosen based on its viral success. The choice of method is based on the lack of qualitative research in the research field of digital storytelling. The film is analyzed based on a method of visual rhetoric analysis which is a three-part method with the focus on the visualization of human suffering and the use of pathos. This is done with support in earlier research that examines NGO campaigns and digital storytelling as well as visual rhetoric theory and visualization of human suffering. The result of the this research essay shows that the campaign film through the use of digital storytelling recognized attributes and rhetoric tropes visualize human suffering through pathos.

People with psychotic disorders die earlier than expected due to physical illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer. Despite substantial evidence about managing physical health to improve quality of life and reduce morbidity and mortality, there is limited research from the perspectives of people living with psychotic disorders. Since discourses are attached to all areas of knowledge, I situated myself within the critical social paradigm to understand factors that subjugate voices of people with psychotic disorders in research, practices, and policies. I used postcolonial theory as a lens for my research to show power asymmetry that often oppresses and dominates patients based on exclusion. Postcolonial theory in general and Spivak’s theory more specifically helped draw the parallel between systems of power such as colonization and patriarchy that silence the subaltern in the context of colonization and people with mental illness in psychiatry. Committing to Spivak’s theory of subalternity for self-representation, I chose digital storytelling as a methodological approach for generating transformative knowledge that exposes forces that mediate health and illness. Digital storytelling has an epistemological commitment to self-representation and critical reflection through visual, audio, and other forms of expression that facilitate more accurate articulations of experiences. The overarching purpose of this thesis was to explore the process of digital storytelling with people with psychotic disorders as a means of expressing their voices and to understand how nurses and healthcare leaders engage with the digital stories and foresee the use of digital stories in healthcare practices and policies. Six short videos capturing personal stories of people with psychotic disorders about their physical health needs and concerns were produced. Digital stories are audio-visual vignettes of approximately 2-5 minutes in length, presenting first-person stories in conjunction with audiovisual material (photos, images, soundtracks, etc.). The digital stories were presented in 2 focus group sessions to understand their impact on nurses and nursing leaders (n=15). Findings from this research brought forth stories that spoke of deep struggles people with psychotic disorders experience in addressing their physical health concerns within the psychiatric system. Participants talked about their embodied experiences and invisibility in the healthcare system in their digital stories. They expressed that healthcare providers had paternalistic approaches when addressing their physical health problems and revealed how they compensated for their lack of power and loss of identity. Story makers embedded their experiences with notions of powerlessness and despair and the associated negative impact on significant aspects of their lives. By reflecting on the digital stories and placing the content of stories within the larger context of the psychiatric system and current practices, nurses were able to expose power relations and structures such as quantitative approaches to care, stigma, and the biomedical model of care that excluded the experiences of people with psychotic disorders in psychiatry. Meanwhile, reflecting on the stories exposed nurses’ passive stance in challenging and resisting the dynamics that exclude patients’ voices at every level of care. In this research, Spivak’s theory helped highlight the thematic centrality of epistemic violence and the role of the digital stories in overcoming epistemic injustice and opening a line of communication with those in positions of power in psychiatry.

No description available.

Storytelling is often looked at as something archaic or something that simpler cultures engage in. However, in our sophisticated and highly technological world storytelling swirls about us though we may not always recognize it. This thesis looks at the phenomenon of digital storytelling that functions to create community on the Internet. In order to ground this phenomenon in theory, I examine the works of Giambattista Vico, the 18th-century Neapolitan philosopher/rhetorician, who lived on the cusp of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Furthermore, as a teacher of rhetoric to youth, Vico admonished young people to study the arts of poetry, painting, and oratory. These three arts are part of digital storytelling with the story line, visuals, and voice over. Digital storytelling, therefore, reaches more people because these arts are easily understood and accepted by people of all ages and education. Marshall McLuhan, the 20th-century Canadian scholar was an eclectic critic of technology and culture who anticipated the Internet. McLuhan used Vichian theory as the basis for some of his writings on technology. My study synthesizes and makes connections between McLuhan's writings on technology and the particular technology of digital storytelling. The new technologies bring back a secondary orality as well as more visual communication such as the radio and television in a print saturated culture. Today we are living in a world where writing, the spoken word and music, and visual images blend together in the digital milieu of the Internet. Digital storytelling is just one way that technology is being used to enhance an ancient genre. As one of its goals is to create community, this genre is trying to achieve what McLuhan suggested in the coming together of a global village.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att belysa Digital Storytelling som arbetsprocess och skildra ifall skapandet av digitala livsberättelser kan vara meningsskapande i en återhämtningsprocess vid psykisk ohälsa. Studien tar avstamp i betydelsen av att berätta sin historia för att ge sina erfarenheter struktur och mening, vilket forskning visar vara främjande vid psykisk ohälsa. I denna uppsats skildrar två personer med psykisk ohälsa sina livsberättelser via arbetsprocessen Digital Storytelling, vilket möjliggör multimodala uttryckssätt som ger deras erfarenheter mening i mer än bara ord. Centrala frågeställningar i uppsatsen är: Kan Digital Storytelling, som arbetsprocess, främja subjektivt meningsskapande i en återhämtningsprocess vid psykisk ohälsa? Och kan Digital Storytelling vara ett medel för att sprida förståelse om psykisk ohälsa till andra? Empiri samlas in genom deltagande observation vid skapandet av två Digital Storytelling-filmer och genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Empirin analyseras sedan mot uppsatsens teoretiska referensramar, vilka är Narrativ analys, KASAM och The Tidal Model och diskuteras vidare i relation till tidigare forskning om multimodalt berättande, skildring av berättelse via bild och musik, samt livsberättelser och återhämtning vid psykisk ohälsa. Resultaten visar hur arbetsprocessen med Digital Storytelling kan öka en persons känsla av sammanhang då arbetsprocessen ger mening åt personernas erfarenheter av att leva med psykisk ohälsa, men också hur Digital Storytelling kan vara ett lättillgänglig och starkt medel att nå ut till andra om psykisk ohälsa. / The purpose of this paper is to highlight Digital Storytelling as a process, and to portray the creation of a digital life stories as a meaningfull process when recovering from mental illness. The study builds on the importance of telling a story so that a persons experiences gets structure and meaning, which research shows promote mental health. In this paper two people with mental illness depicting their life stories through the work of Digital Storytelling, which enabling multimodal expression that gives meaning to their experiences in more than just words. Central issues in this paper is: Can Digital Storytelling promote subjective meaning in a recovery process of mental illness? And can Digital Storytelling be a means for spreading understanding about mental illness to others? Empirical data is collected through participant observation in the creation of two Digital Storytelling films and through semi-structured interviews. The empirical data is analyzed with the support of the thesis theoretical frames of reference, which is Narrative analysis, SOC and The Tidal Model, and further on discussed in relation to previous research on multimodal narrative, portrayal of story through images and music, as well as life stories and recovery in mental illness. The results have shown how the work of Digital Storytelling can increase a person's sense of coherence when giving meaning to people's experiences of living with mental illness, but also how Digital Storytelling can be an easily accessible and strong means to reach out to others about mental illness.

No description available.

This paper explores the processes and outcomes of “The Recipe of Me,” a digital storytelling residency whose goals were to foster autonomy and community among disadvantaged youth aged twelve to fifteen living in the Orlando Union Rescue Mission. Using on-site experience and data, I explore the possibilities and advantages digital storytelling offered the students living in this population and consider the challenges of creating digital stories specific to this site. This case study provides a portrait of the residency which outlines the phases, techniques, tools and approaches used to create the digital stories and empower youth to create using multiple literacies. In doing so, I intend to reveal the ways in which digital storytelling encourages community, autonomy, agency, and artistic voice within youth at Orlando Union Rescue Mission.

In most video games today that focus on a single story, scripting languages are used for controlling the artificial intelligence of the virtual actors. While scripting is a great tool for reliably performing a story, it has many disadvantages; mainly, it is limited by only being able to respond to those situations that were explicitly declared, causing unreliable responses to unknown situations, and the believability of the virtual actor is hindered by possible conflicts between scripted actions and appropriate responses as perceived by the viewer. This paper presents a novel method of storytelling by manipulating the environment, whether physically or the agent's perception of it, around the goals and behaviors of the virtual actor in order to advance the story rather than controlling the virtual actor explicitly. The virtual actor in this method is completely autonomous and the environment is manipulated by a story manager so that the virtual actor chooses to satisfy its goals in accordance with the direction of the story. Comparisons are made between scripting, traditional autonomy, Lionhead Studio's Black & White, Mateas and Stern's Façade, and autonomy with environmental manipulation in terms of design, performance, believability, and reusability. It was concluded that molding an environment around a virtual actor with the help of a story manager gives the actor the ability to reliably perform both event-based stories while preserving the believability and reusability of the actor and environment. While autonomous actors have traditionally been used solely for emergent storytelling, this new storytelling method enables them to be used reliably and efficiently to tell event-based stories as well while reaping the benefits of their autonomous nature. In addition, the separation of the virtual actors from the environment and story manager in terms of design promotes a cleaner, reusable architecture that also allows for independent development and improvement. By modeling artificial intelligence design after Herbert Simon's “artifact,” emphasizing the encapsulation of the inner mechanisms of virtual actors, the next era of digital storytelling can be driven by the design and development of reusable storytelling components and the interaction between the virtual actor and its environment.