A genre theory perspective on digital storytelling

Abstract

In this dissertation, I drew on analytical frames found in genre theory to examine digital storytelling as a cultural practice with historically developed genre features, practices, and structures. A central concern was to examine how genre mediated ongoing discursive work. I conducted interviews with designers and facilitators from four socially influential programs of digital storytelling to understand the cultural practice as simultaneously durable and dynamic. Attending to a corpus of facilitator-nominated digital stories, I developed genre-informed discourse analytical methods to explore how locally manifested genre features embodied ideological orientations, institutional pressures, and individual intentions. Analysis of ethnographic data allowed me to describe the four programs as dialectically connected to each other through a shared meaning potential they drew from and added to. In the mean time, each program developed temporarily stabilized genre practices in response to contingent social, cultural, institutional, and personal needs and intentions. Digital stories manifested genre features that indexed collective ideological and experiential knowledge. I suggest that we treat temporality as one dimension of genre features.