A GENRE THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON DIGITAL ... - ETD

with compassion, speak out about injustice, and become involved in civic and political life
(Storytelling, 2010). Therefore, digital storytelling is a socially influential practice. Its power
resides in its expressive potential, ways in which it engages disenfranchised young people in
productive identity work. As amply documented by research, digital storytelling offers youth the
opportunity to develop more “agentive” senses of self and to imagine positive change in the
future (Paull 2002; Roche-Smith 2004; Hull, Katz et al. 2006; Nixon 2008).
The expressivists draw on social theories of narrative to consider digital storytelling as
generically linked to the ancient art of storytelling, a genre that is culturally universal and
emerges early in the literacy development of children (Ochs & Capps, 2001). At the conceptual
core of the narrative theory is the notion that the act of narration shapes one’s sense of self by
creating a symbolic artifact for self-understanding, which can be reflected upon, serves as the
foundation of new projections of the self, and can be used to mediate future activities (Bruner,
1986; Ochs & Capps, 2001). Therefore, storytelling involves the act of self-authoring that is
simultaneously dialogic and unique (M. M. Bakhtin, 1986), and the narratives offer potential for
the making, reworking, and reimagining of the self (Bruner, 1994). Because digital storytelling is
conceptually linked to personal narrative, it lends itself well to reflective self-authoring that puts
shape on an unfolding chronology of experiences and distills them into a symbolic form to be
expressed, critiqued, and remembered. To that end, digital storytelling can be a developmental
tool for declaring meaning to and reconstructing experiences, refashioning the self, realizing
personal empowerment, and achieving social connection and social change. In this regard, the
analytical focus has been placed on how an individual author is empowered through the
expressive work that digital storytelling enables, with careful attention paid to the short-lived
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