This thesis investigates how community groups make use of hypermedia technology to tell their stories. Hypermedia software can enable multimedia and multi-linear production which brings new modes of expression and approaches to organising material which can lead to new ways of telling a community story. Using Ricoeur's consideration of the role of imagination in social action, it is argued that storytelling is an important process in maintaining and strengthening community. A review of community media production reinforces this argument that story is integral to community experience and action and considers how this is influenced by choice and engagement with media technology. Hypermedia as both a technology and a form for community representation and story as well as approaches for facilitating the use of hypermedia software in community or participatory media production are explored through a hypermedia storytelling project with St Paul's Carnival Association, Bristol, UK. This project was both observed and facilitated by the author which allowed privileged access to the emerging process. Different methodological approaches were required to accommodate these different roles. Facilitation approaches were borrowed from participatory development and community media which favour participant-led processes. The approach to observation borrows from ethnomethodology in that it favours the participants' accounts of their production and is influenced by Certeau's account of tactical and strategic activity. Analysis of the case study suggests that hypermedia technology can be used to produce rich representations of community experience. Theprocess of production is shaped in particular ways by choice of media, context of production and motivations of participants. Particular attention is drawn to the following aspects: • How hypermedia story making relates to community identity and action including the dynamic between individual and collaborative practices and motivations; • the process of storymaking as a community project including participants' tactical engagement with both story and technology; • the form of the emerging hypermedia community story in particular the collage-like nature of hypermedia production and the appropriateness of this form for the partial and provisional nature of community story; • the role of the facilitator; Suggestions are made for a framework for community-based hypermedia production
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:392804 |
Date | January 2002 |
Creators | Miskelly, Clodagh |
Publisher | University of the West of England, Bristol |
Source Sets | Ethos UK |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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