Digital Storytelling: A Narrative Method for Positive Identity Development in Minority Youth

ABSTRACT

This article explores the use of digital storytelling as a group narrative method for positive identity development in the case of African American youth residing in economically disadvantaged, urban areas. Factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and/or violence exposure may heighten normal youth challenges and affect identity development. Narrative tools that help minority adolescents produce agentic, coherent, affective, and adaptive self-concepts contribute to a proactive identity system and, therefore, an enhanced capacity for them to intervene in their own lives. The purpose of the afterschool digital storytelling group was for youth to gain opportunities in media production and in personal story construction. As a result, youth gained a valuable narrative medium for constructing their stories, and thus their identities, into ones of possibility, promise, and potential. Implications for helping professionals include how to use digital storytelling with youth to gain insight and understanding into a personally difficult life event.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital storytelling
• identity
• minority youth

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge our community partners: Parramore Kidz Zone, My Brother’s Keeper, and the University of Central Florida’s CREATE, in Orlando, Florida. We are particularly appreciative of the support provided by Gino Nicolas, Sasha Mills, Raysean Brown, Lisa Early, Matt Tracy, Stella Sung, and Tiffany Lumpkin.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kim M. Anderson

Kim M. Anderson, Ph.D., LCSW, is a professor in the School of Social Work (SSW) and the Public Affairs (PAF) Doctoral program at the University of Central Florida where she teaches clinical practice and evaluation courses, qualitative methods, social inquiry, and public policy. Dr. Anderson has extensive experience in the use of digital storytelling as a narrative method for adolescents and adults facing adversity.