Digital storytelling and the narrative turn in psychology: Creating spaces for collective empowerment

Abstract

In this article, we propose a model that combines digital storytelling with narrative practice to create a facilitated peer-to-peer experiential learning space for collective empowerment. This model was inspired by an educational intervention that utilized participatory digital comic strip making to raise students’ awareness of bullying and its consequences. The makerspace involved allows for the creation of digital artifacts representing participants’ personal narratives. Narrative practice is grounded in the idea that there are no problematic people but rather not effective narratives about how people are supposed to act. Making digital stories, getting constructive peers feedback, and then releasing more polyphonic and adaptive sequel versions is proposed here as an effective way to raise participants’ awareness and help them integrate different points of view, as well as enrich their narratives on critical social phenomena. A significant advantage of the digital storytelling genre employed is that the digital artifacts produced have a concrete material presence: they can be shared, performed, or modified. Participants, with the help of their peers, participate in a group process facilitated by their teacher, aiming to locate and change problematic elements in their stories, and by doing so they materialize and consolidate the improvement in their personal narratives.

Relational, Appreciative, and Process-oriented Digital Storytelling: A Duoethnography

“…In such an approach, the facilitators' role is to help participants realize new perspectives, alternative connections, and new patterns of relating with each other, and with their digital storytelling artifacts. The community as a whole becomes the apparatus for both personal and collective empowerment, a multiplier of perspectives, and an amplifier of synergies (Brailas, 2021). As Michael Bakhtin points out, "Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction."…”

“…In the context of the "giving voice," participatory, community-based, research paradigm, digital storytelling (DST) can be used as an active way of realizing, capturing, and sharing participants' untold stories. In the action research tradition, DST can also be used as a way to create storytelling communities and, by doing so, empower people and develop networks of resilience (Brailas, 2021;Papadopoulos, 1999).…”

“…Participants in DST programs interact with their digital stories during their development as well as during their distribution and sharing, resulting in multilayered reflective processing of personal experiences. Nurturing an appreciative inclusive culture allow participants to feel safe to share their stories (Brailas, 2021). In the context of an appreciative community, DST can provide a welcoming inclusive space to discuss stigmatized topics, and give voice to marginalized groups (Gachago & Livingston, 2020;Guse et al, 2013;Matthews & Sunderland, 2017).…”

“…Facilitated group work and organized peer-to-peer interactions within an appreciative culture engage participants in a group forming process where they feel safe to share their stories and where they can offer and receive valuable feedback. In the virtual mirror that is created through the story sharing, it becomes possible for the participants to recognize their own unspoken voices and hidden narratives (Brailas, 2021). In terms of the Bakhtinian theory, this is "the tale of how I get myself from the other" (Holquist, 2002, p. 28).…”

Customization and use of digital storytelling in providing online career counseling services to students with physical-motor disabilities: A mixed study

“…However, the majority of studies on online counseling have focused on online and offline counseling process (Ierardi et al, 2022 ; Linz et al, 2022 ) and less attention has been paid to investigating the importance of other technologies in online counseling process. About storytelling, various studies have been conducted and the majority of them have pointed to digital storytelling while (Brailas, 2021 ) it is needed to develop digital storytelling like other technologies. In this study, it has been attempted to further study online counseling by using storytelling and customize digital storytelling to take a new step in the development of digital storytelling.…”