Storytelling is one of the most contested terrains of contemporary digital cultures. Who gets to tell stories? Who gets to define the frameworks within which stories exist? Whose voices get heard? How do we trust the stories that we encounter in our digital networks? With an increasing privatization of the public sphere, emergence of non-human actors, and dramatic instability in recognizing truth, we need to look beyond the mechanics and processes of producing digital stories. We need playbooks for creative, innovative, and collective forms of narrative practice to harness the power and affordances of digital media towards hopeful futures through collective action.

The Digital Narratives Studio is housed at the School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is established to look at some of the most cutting-edge challenges to digital storytelling, precipitated by the rise and accelerated spread of large scale computational networks.

The Essence of Digital Narrative Studio can be elaborated through two main formulas, which are connected with the three pillars shaping our work: Fellowship in Experimental Authorship (AuthEx), Narrative Change Residency (N-ChaRe), and RealityCheck Consortium (ReCheck).

DIGITAL NARRATIVES = STORIES + BODIES + MEDIA

Narratives frame how we make meanings of the world. They are the conditions through which stories emerge, bodies get written, and media objects proliferate. Contemporary digital technologies dramatically change the stories being told, bodies telling them, and the media that shape them both.

DIGITAL NARRATIVES STUDIO = fn (STORIES + BODIES + MEDIA) * HOPE/CRISES

Current Digital Narrative conditions are heavily informed by a rehearsal of doom, gloom, and crises, that we call ‘politics of despair’. These politics of despair produce stories that reinforce the brokenness of the world, while breaking the bodies that are the most vulnerable, and media practices that generate inaction and resignation in the face of seemingly insurmountable crises.

The function of Digital Narratives Studio is to examine how we can find new ways to address these urgencies by reorienting towards hope and reframing crises as catalysts for collective care action.

STRUCTURE

DNS RECAP

CONTACT