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Week 7: Social Media & Storytelling

Destinations, Technology, unit 2 by Kendell Newman

When stories go digital … they can also go viral. What does it mean for a story to be shared and shareable on social media? How is sharing a “story” in this context different from traditional or other forms of story sharing? Digital stories for social also allow co-creation and audience interaction. Are these features new or just new versions of an old practice? In what ways does an Instagram or SnapChat “story” align with your understandings of digital storytelling? And where do they differ?

DEADLINE: Monday, March 1 @ 8pm

Read + Chat

“Online retellings and the viral transformation of a Twitter breakup story” by Anna De Fina and Brittany Toscano Gore

“A gay love story of the first world war’s year”  by  @guillemclua  on Twitter

“This Panda is Dancing” by Max Stossel, Time Well Spent

“Chapter 5: Social Media Storytelling” by Bryan Alexander in New Digital Storytelling (login info in Drive)

“Social Stories: Digital Storytelling and Social Media” by Jessica Marie Johnson in Forum Journal (PDF available in Drive)

Daily Create

Taking a break from the Daily Create this week to flood your Twitter feed with a new kind of story (see below!)

Activity:

Let’s tell a story — together! This week, we’ll use Twitter to co-create a digital story. Here’s how it works:

  1. Make sure you’re following all your peers in class on Twitter. You might also bookmark our #ed677uaf hashtag, since that tag will be the spine of our story.
  2. On Thursday morning at 9am, be ready for the kick-off Tweet of our story. I will post the opening line as a tweet with #ed677uaf.
  3. Want to write the next sentence? Post a tweet with the #ed677uaf tag, and watch as the story unfolds. If someone beats you to the next line, build on what they said. The story is likely to go a lot of different directions — it’s more fun when we’re working together on each of the directions.
  4. You may pull other tweeters into the story (should we invite Bryan Alexander along?). You may also include images and links in your story tweets.
  5. You *must* contribute at least 3 tweets to the story. You may not tweet consecutively to the story (i.e., no posting 2-3 tweets in a row as your contribution). This is more fun when we spread it out over a few days — if you can, log-in daily or every other day and help us grow and extend the story. There is no limit to how many times you can add.

Weekly Declarations

Please fill out this this form to declare your progress in our explorations together this week.

Featured image  by  Prateek Katyal  on  Unsplash