Chris Mele: The Challenges of Community-based Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling appears to hold promise as a progressive, critical method for community-centered academic research. It presents real possibilities for researchers to deepen dialogue and understanding by including ‘research subjects’ as experts of their own experiences as well as structural conditions and broader circumstances. But, as this presentation examines, researchers need to acknowledge the perils in making such stories readily and easily accessible and that such risks may undermine the very reasons why historically marginalized communities choose to participate, preserve and make their stories publicly available in the first place. This presentation addresses opportunities and problems that arise when digital collection, storage and dissemination, academic scholarship, and community-defined interests and goals do not readily align. Recent technologies to surmount such obstacles will also be discussed.
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1:00 320 Lockwood, DSSN