Storytelling in the Digital Age – Assignment 1:3

Hello everyone! For Assignment 1:3 I have decided to answer question seven, which I will put right here for your convenience: “At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?”

Storytelling and literature are inherently cultural elements. Through oral and written stories, the world of a civilization can be painted over thousands of years. As Chamberlin mentions in his book, If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories‌: Finding Common Ground,  colonizers often treat the indigenous people of whatever land they’re colonizing as “others.” Chamberlin defines others as “people who don’t write things down like we do, or speak like we do, or look like we do, or behave like we do,” (13). With this context in mind, it is easy to see how Indigenous stories, literature, and language have slowly been exiled from the mainstream dialects and literature of Canada. While wrong, this is the unfortunate reality of the colonization of Indigenous people in our country. Where the narrative begins to shift is with technology and the digital age. Before I dive into how technology helps keep cultures alive and mainstream, I want to mention why technology and social media are effective tools in doing so.

In the Tedx Talk by Ashley Fell entitled “Why storytelling is so powerful in the digital era,” Fell delves into the world of visual storytelling. In the modern era, our attention spans are shockingly short. Fell estimates that the average young person’s attention span is three minutes and fifty-five seconds (5:54). Because of this, we digest information at a quick pace before we move onto the next thing. This is the perfect attention span for scrolling through Instagram  or Facebook.  Fell goes on to talk about what an engaging story encompasses by using the “four I’s:” Interest, Instruct, Involve, Inspire.  Social media is a fantastic way to garner interest from a wide range of people; most social media platforms offer image uploads that are a surefire way to grab an audience’s attention. Once that attention is grabbed, it is up to the author of the post to fulfill the other three I’s through their caption, geolocation, tags, hashtags, or any other means in which they can do so. If successfully utilized, social media can be the ultimate storytelling platform that works with, rather than against, our short attention spans.

While social media is an efficient storytelling vessel, what does this have to do with “other” groups that have had their cultural stories pushed outside of society’s view? Many Indigenous groups have kept their traditions alive, but because many Canadians have a subconscious view of Indigenous people and their culture as “other,” these traditions are often cast to the shadows. With social media as a free and fairly accessible platform to all, these traditions now have a new way to be brought to light. As a an example of this, I suggest you take a quick look at the article by HuffPost  about Indigenous influencers in Canada. This article contains many examples of Indigenous people in Canada that are actively sharing stories and traditions from their cultures.

Without the need for a publisher or a professional publishing platform, these stories are able to be shared to the billions of people around the world in a way that they couldn’t have been before. Social media has given groups labeled as “other” a newfound voice to educate, enlighten, and take up space in a world that has cast them aside for hundreds of years.

Works Cited

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Tedx Talks. “Why storytelling is so powerful in the digital era.” Online video clip. Youtube, 13 July 2017. Web. 16 Jan 2020.

Zamon, Rebecca. “Indigenous Canadians on Instagram Celebrate Their Culture Beautifully.” HuffPost,  21 June 2017. Web. 16 Jan 2020.