Online Program

LI Course
Oral

Partnership: The Center for Digital Storytelling; 1250 Addison Street, Suite 104, Berkeley, CA 94702; www.storycenter.org; 510-548-2065

Statement of Purpose and Institute Overview: The purpose of this Institute is to build skills for carrying out ethically sound, community-based participatory research grounded in a culture-centered (Dutta, 2008) digital storytelling approach. Our article “A Situated Practice of Ethics for Participatory Visual and Digital Methods in Public Health Research and Practice: A Focus on Digital Storytelling” (forthcoming in the American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming 2014) identifies a gap in knowledge and opportunities for researchers to understand and adopt high standards of practice. If carried out responsibly, digital storytelling has the potential to function both as a vehicle for community -based health promotion and as a method for collecting culture-centered data that can assist researchers and practitioners in better serving local communities. A narrative perspective is sorely needed in the field, as it works against one-size-fits-all approaches, instead providing a focus that is more open to the rich and variegated tapestry of health and wellbeing. Participatory visual and digital techniques, such as digital storytelling, enhance this picture. Based on a Freirian model in which participants construct stories as they construct change, the goal of our digital storytelling practice is to provide a creative forum for expressing the generative themes or collective issues of community members. Digital storytelling, as a process, is a sensitizing tool for narratively informed public health research, advocacy, and health promotion practice. It can be used as a method for data collection – to investigate the subjective complexity of health without shortchanging participants’ agency. The workshop process also serves as a potential mechanism for health promotion among and for participants (Gubrium, 2009). We see digital stories as “sense making” objects that reveal the ways that individuals negotiate local and mainstream views about health and wellbeing, and serve as embodied representations of lived experience (Gubrium & DiFulvio, 2011). Beyond being mere points of data, digital stories enliven statistics, make research meaningful, and position research participants to define relevant issues, broaden the evidence base, and create an emotional product that attracts and influences policymakers and the public at large. Finally, digital stories can be re-purposed for use in health communication campaigns (on and offline) to effect broad reach. We will employ a number of teaching methods during this Learning Institute, including mini-lectures, case studies and small group work, interactive writing and narrative sharing exercises, and open discussion.

Session Objectives: Describe a framework for ethical practice in digital storytelling research Explain the key elements of digital storytelling as a community-based participatory research methodology Design an ethically sound project that positions digital storytelling as a qualitative method for public health research

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)