This presentation looks at how new media forms are adapting to the demands of audiences who are willing, and in some cases expecting, to contribute meaningfully to the narratives created. Much has been promised in terms of audience participation, interactivity and engagement but to date the work produced has been heavily authored and has offered limited opportunity for, or the illusion of, audience participation (Rose 2011; Manovich 2001; Ryan 2001). In addition, online content creation has also been associated with many negative consequences (Zuboff; 2018, Quandt; 2018, Lutz & Hoffman; 2017) that cannot be overlooked in productions of this nature.
Utilising lessons learnt from her PhD projectRed Branch Heroes, this researcher proposes the use of negotiated narratives -narratives that are composed and designed by all parties – which offer a greater opportunity for discourse. Such a production is centred on the desirability of participation and inclusivity. Using examples of her work Secret Story Network (an on-going research project that uses online role playing techniques),undertaken in the UK, this researcher intends to show that interactive practices that provoke or support social participation require collaborative approaches to writing and design directly with audiences. This presentation will look at how these techniques can be used to offer audiences real agency to ensure that participation is respectful and not tokenistic or meaningless.
In particular this paper will look at forms of writing that are role playing based (RPG) and that utilise process theatre (O’Neill 1995) and gamification techniques (Alderman 2017) to show how these can be used to build and populate new fictional worlds.
It suggests methods to ensure that hate and prejudice can be replaced by empathy and understanding so that participants can contribute to meaningful creative production.
It will also briefly ask how such production can contribute to democratic practices. Henry Jenkins affirms ‘right now around the world, democracy needs our help’ (2019, p.7) so the work attempts to put negotiated narratives at the centre of storytelling projects so they can make a contribution to positive rather than negative forms of participation. Tome, Lopes, Reis and Dias (2019) suggest active citizenship is built through education and particularly through ‘projects that involve the school, the families and the community’ (Heckman & Karapakula, 2019) and that while digital media use is high, adequate research is not evident about its potential especially in relation to social participation. Secret Story Networksuggests ways to tell our own stories, in our own ways, within the privacy of our own networks, and therefore helps us better understand our online behaviour and practices.
http://www.secretstorynetwork.com
References used:
Jenkins, H. (2019, 30 may). Participatory politics in an age of crisis: Henry Jenkins & Nico Carpentier (Part I). Confessions of an ACA-FAN. [Blog post] Retrieved from http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2019/5/30/
participatory-politics-in-an-age-of-crisis-henry-jenkins-amp-nico-carpentier-part-i
Dias, C, Lopes, P, Reis, B, Tome, V (2019) Active citizenship and participation through the media: a community project focused on pre-school and primary school children. Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 36, 2019, pp. 101-12