This chapter examines the transformation of oral and written storytelling practices in African folklore industry to online digital platforms. The chapter engages the complexities, limits, and constraints of the stakeholders participatory model as it informs digital storytelling, and applies theoretical tactics to community media and the digital storytelling movement to develop an analytic framework for understanding how these stories can be used to give a voice to the voiceless, raise awareness, increase education, and promote democracy. Folklores serve a descriptive as well as prescriptive role by consistently depicting societal and cultural norms. The increasing usage of new media technologies amongst the producers and audiences of these folklores cannot be ruled out in Africa.
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Languages sourced from various cultures have been used by people to tell stories. Whether these stories are elaborate fictions intertwined together by many, or carved by one from the barest bones; whether they are tiny fragments of truth told with a careful intention, designed to convey a message, expose an identity, or nurture a community, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the art and activity of folkloric storytelling is an ancient and universal part of most of the world’s cultures (Hertzberg & Lunby, 2008). As something that surpasses time and space, the implications of storytelling’s and other formats of folklores transformation into digital mediatized form calls for some deeper investigation specifically as it concerns its contribution to sustainable social change. By “sustainable social change” this chapter refers to a lasting process of empowerment and transformation that aids in the reduction of poverty and makes possible greater social equality and the larger fulfillment of human potential (Quebral, 1975).
The initial part of this chapter analyze the movement of folkloric productions such as songs, drama, tales etc to online digital storytelling, and look at examples of digital storytelling projects in Africa. Digital folkloric stories and songs are being used as a tool in activist organizing and education, as a technique for increasing understanding of social stigmas such as people living with AIDS/HIV, Cancer, diabetes and as a way for victims of trauma and violence to speak out about their daily life experiences. Digital storytelling’s growing popularity suggests that it is part of a larger shift in the media industry toward grassroots, citizen and participatory based journalism in a new public sphere.
In the second part of the chapter, analysis of the ways in which the participatory method and multiplicity model inform the process of creating the digital folkloric stories is done by exploring these critical questions: To what extent can the digital folkloric storytelling movement be participatory if the model is based on a unified structure developed in the West? How are cultural differences addressed during the story telling process? For example, in some cultures the experiences of abuse and oppression are private and never spoken about publicly. What are the access issues in relation to the distribution of a digital story particularly in the developing world? Who is going to see it? What are the best ways to know and or measure its impact?
Finally, the chapter demonstrate that the four theoretical approaches to the definition of community media (Carpentier, Lie & Servaes, 2003) may also be applied to the digital story telling movement (and by movement, I make references to the content, production processes, distribution, and viewing audience) in order to situate digital storytelling within a framework for analysis and to demonstrate support for the idea that the application of digital storytelling in a community and its subsequent effects, will always be in relation to the community itself (cultural), and the relation that community has to the larger society, state, market and structures of power.