Stories tell us? Political narrative, demes, and the transmission of knowledge through culture

Abstract

This paper compares two institutions of storytelling, mainstream national narratives and self-represented digital storytelling. It considers the centenary of World War 1, especially the Gallipoli campaign (1915) and its role in forming Australian ‘national character’. Using the new approach of cultural science, it investigates storytelling as a means by which cultures make and bind groups or ‘demes’. It finds that that demic (group-made) knowledge trumps individual experience, and that self-representation (digital storytelling) tends to copy the national narrative, even when the latter is known not to be true. The paper discusses the importance of culture in the creation of knowledge, arguing that if the radical potential of digital storytelling is to be understood – and realised – then a systems (as opposed to behavioural) approach to communication is necessary. Without a new model of knowledge, it seems we are stuck with repetition of the same old story.

Keywords:

• Gallipoli
• digital storytelling
• cultural science
• demes
• copying
• innovation

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage Project LP11010027: ‘Digital storytelling and co-creative media: The role of community arts and media in propagating and coordinating population-wide creative practice’ (2012–14). I would like to thank Julie Lunn, Curtin University, for research assistance.

Notes

1. ‘Meso-level’ refers to a three-level categorisation of economic analysis proposed by Kurt Dopfer and colleagues to improve the standard distinction between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Mesoeconomics is concerned with the institutional level between agents and systems (Dopfer, Foster, & Potts, 2004). The micro-meso-macro model can be extended beyond formal economics to other adaptive systems, to study the ‘rules’ that constitute social and cultural institutions as populations, structures and processes of rules.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Hartley

John Hartley, AM, PhD, DLitt, FAHA, ICA Fellow, is John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Professor of Cultural Science at Curtin University, Australia, and Professor of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, Wales. His present research interests include cultural science (complex systems and evolutionary theory in the study of culture), creative economy and culture, and the representation of identities in popular entertainment. He is author of many books and articles, most recently: Digital Futures for Media and Cultural Studies (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), A Companion to New Media Dynamics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, co-edited), Key Concepts in Creative Industries (Sage, 2013, co-authored), Cultural Science (Bloomsbury, 21014, with Jason Potts) and Creative Economy and Culture (Sage, 2015, with Wen Wen and Henry Siling Li). He is currently working on a team-based project on ‘Publishing-Knowledge-Citizenship’ and a book called DIY Girls for Palgrave Macmillan’s Entertainment Industries series, with Rhiannon Hartley. He is Editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies (Sage) and Publisher-Editor of Cultural Science Journal (Online).