Coaxing an intimate public: Life narrative in digital storytelling

Abstract

This article considers the practice of digital storytelling in light of contemporary theories of autobiography and affect. Using the concept of coaxed life narrative developed by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, I analyse the role of digital storytelling in diversifying the voices in the public sphere. Drawing on Berlant's theory of the intimate public, I argue that given its formal restrictions and thematic preoccupations, digital storytelling produces texts focused on affective connection with the audience, contributing to the prevalence of intimacy and affect in the construction of contemporary citizenship. I conclude by considering the capacity of digital storytelling to articulate the relationships between personal experiences of structural social and political inequalities, given its narrative emphasis on closure, affect and universality.

Notes

1. See Thumim (2009, 627–9) for an analysis of the tensions forming around the use of digital stories for the construction and maintenance of community.

2. Hartley (2009) raises useful questions about the impact that this insistence on the first-person perspective and voice has on digital storytelling's ability to contribute to the democratization of knowledge.

3. See Matthews' (2007) discussion of obedient participants in Video Nation.

4. See Burgess (2007, 199–241) for some insight into how digital storytelling practitioners deal with tensions arising from these requirements in two examples, the BBC's Capture Wales project, and QUT's Kelvin Grove project.