Self-Representation
Digital Stories are known as both mediated and mediatized stories. They are considered mediated stories because each story is told through the digital medium of videos. It adds different layers of storytelling that did not exist before digital media dictated so much of our lives. Mediatization is the theory that media directs and forms society because of its highly powerful, immediate, and influential effects.
When such an exciting opportunity to express ourselves exists, naturally problems of authenticity on the creator's part arises. Yet, just the fact that "ordinary people" are allowed to represent themselves by using media as a medium (instead of actual people) has encouraged them to venture out into a more free, brave and creative way of self-expression. Digital Stories are not meant to be purely objective stories. Rather, they should be treated as the "truth" of our experiences. Whether a comedic storyteller chooses to tell his or her story in a sarcastic fashion or a traditional storyteller chooses to use a more familiar structure of reciting their experiences in a straight-line story, both are digital stories in which the outcome of the type and content of the video that is produced (hopefully) lies in the storyteller's hands.
When such an exciting opportunity to express ourselves exists, naturally problems of authenticity on the creator's part arises. Yet, just the fact that "ordinary people" are allowed to represent themselves by using media as a medium (instead of actual people) has encouraged them to venture out into a more free, brave and creative way of self-expression. Digital Stories are not meant to be purely objective stories. Rather, they should be treated as the "truth" of our experiences. Whether a comedic storyteller chooses to tell his or her story in a sarcastic fashion or a traditional storyteller chooses to use a more familiar structure of reciting their experiences in a straight-line story, both are digital stories in which the outcome of the type and content of the video that is produced (hopefully) lies in the storyteller's hands.
Multimodality
With fast-paced society and the attention span of every young person becoming shorter and shorter, multimodality has become key to capturing people's attention to get almost any message across. The primary difference between digital stories apart from any other ways that a story can be told (oral or text-based) is that they are characterized by the way that it can interact with multiple human senses all at once. As you watch a video of a digital story, you can listen, read, and watch all at the same time—increasing attention span, people's willingness to engage, and the kind of international audience that the video can reach in a moment's notice.
Visibility and Accessibility
With technology quickly making tremendous advances in such short spans of time, digital stories seem to fit naturally into the flow of where all things seem to end up these days—the internet. Exposure is what many people want. Yet, most resources to bring exposure to new information, beliefs or events were only available to those who could afford expensive digital equipment. So unfortunately, the kind of exposure that people experienced turned out to be more similar to exploitation. Today, stories neither have to wait behind book or film publishers nor have to rely on someone else to tell their stories for them.
The web has created an accessibility of shared material that has allowed individuals worldwide to access digital stories of people whom they would've probably never even had the chance to engage with before. Accessibility leads to more visibility as the audience (that may have begun with the local community) watching posted digital stories can quickly evolve into a diverse, international viewer base.
The web has created an accessibility of shared material that has allowed individuals worldwide to access digital stories of people whom they would've probably never even had the chance to engage with before. Accessibility leads to more visibility as the audience (that may have begun with the local community) watching posted digital stories can quickly evolve into a diverse, international viewer base.
Community-driven Participation
Text-based information is a one-way communication because one message has already been laid out leaving readers to fulfill their job in responding to themselves or others about their thoughts on the content that they just absorbed. Digital stories have broken that traditional one-way communication into a two-way communication that includes both creator and viewer to engage with one another directly and far more quickly. Then, with comment sections, the two-way communication can turn into a multi-way communication as there are people commenting on other comments left by an anonymous other. These multilayers of feedback add to the intricate web of thoughts and ideas that are passed along, absorbed, or even flat out rejected sometimes. What sites like YouTube essentially does is creates a stage for a new culture and community of groups of people to form. Digital stories are meant to be shared by others which is why they most videos are created to be published for the public, instead of kept privately on personal computer harddrives.