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31
Pirita Juppi
Engagement and Empowerment
Digital storytelling as a participatory media practice
Digital storytelling is a participatory media practice of the digital era. It shares
similar ideals and goals with participatory video and other amateur media practices
which enable ordinary people to produce media content and to use media as a tool for
civic engagement. What is distinctive of digital storytelling, however, is reliance on
structured and facilitated workshops, emphasis on the art of storytelling, and the im-
portance of the process of creating and sharing personal stories. is article explores
dierent uses and purposes of digital storytelling, focusing on how it can contribute
to empowerment of individuals and communities by developing digital skills needed
for civic engagement in digitalised societies, providing a means for self-reection and
self-representation, and giving an opportunity to have a voice and to be listened to.
Digital storytelling (DST) is a form and a prac-
tice of participatory media in which digital
media technology is used to create and share
autobiographical stories of ordinary people.
In well-structured, facilitated workshops, par-
ticipants create short, rst-person narratives,
combining still images with a voiceover and
other audio elements. ese stories are shared
with other workshop participants and in many
cases also published online.
Besides being a specic participatory prac-
tice and form of media, DST can be regarded
as a global movement which seeks to de-
mocratise the production of media content.1
Digital storytelling changes the tradition-
al relationship between professional media
producers and media consumers by enabling
ordinary people to create digital stories them-
selves.2 e philosophy of DST, as formulated
by the founders of the Center for Digital Sto-
rytelling, emphasizes the importance of the
stories of ordinary people, people’s need to be
heard, and the positive impact that sharing
stories and understanding dierent experienc-
es and perspectives can have in the real world.3
In this article, I explore the potential of
DST in enhancing empowerment of individ-
uals and communities, and especially of var-
ious marginalised groups oen silenced and
invisible in the mainstream media. I base my
discussion on a review of literature on digital
storytelling and participatory media, and on
my personal experiences and observations as
a trainer and facilitator of DST workshops in
various projects and for various target groups.
Some of these experiences have been reported
more extensively in previous research-based
or practice-oriented articles.4
I first will present the “classic” model of
digital storytelling and compare it to other
participatory media practices. I then will ex-
plore various contexts and uses of DST glob-
ally and in the Nordic region, and nally I will
focus the analyses specically to the empower-
ment potential of digital storytelling.
Pirita Juppi, PhD, Principal Lecturer at the
Turku University of Applied Sciences, Arts
Academy, in Finland. She has trained pro-
fessionals and students in Finland and Tan-
zania to use Digital Storytelling as a par-
ticipatory method in their work since 2010.
NORDICOM-INFORMATION 39 (2017) 2: 31-41
32
Pirita Juppi
The classic model of
digital storytelling
e digital storytelling model was developed
by community theatre professional Joe Lam-
bert and the late performance artist and video
producer Dana Atchley in the early 1990s – at
a time when the Internet was only starting
to become more accessible and widespread;
when aordable and easy-to-use digital me-
dia tools were yet to be launched onto the
market; and when no one had heard of such
things as social media, YouTubers, or blog-
gers. It therefore is understandable, that for
the pioneers of DST workshops, the idea of
ordinary people being able to create their own
digital multimedia pieces seemed exciting,
even revolutionary.5
In 1994, Lambert and his partners estab-
lished the Center for Digital Storytelling –
since 2015 just StoryCenter – in Berkeley, Cal-
ifornia. e centre has hosted countless work-
shops for storytellers and taught the method
to other storytelling trainers and facilitators
in the United States and internationally.6 DST
has spread widely around the world, and its
methodology has evolved as online environ-
ments and digital media tools have developed.
DST essentially is a facilitated group pro-
cess.7 Personal stories typically are developed
and worked on in workshops, which last for
several days, with assistance from one or more
trainers and facilitators. e method does not
require professional media skills or expensive
professional equipment. Rather, digital stories
are produced using whatever technology is
available. Pictures can be taken with mobile
phones, tablets, or digital cameras, and the
story can be edited using free video editing
applications on mobiles devices, laptops, or
desktop computers.
A typical digital story combines visual
storytelling based on photographs and other
still images with a voiceover recorded by the
author of the story. Digital stories also may in-
clude text elements, music, and audio eects.
The final product is a short video, typically
2–4 minutes long. Digital stories are videos in
the sense that they are compiled using video
editing soware and stored in some common-
ly used video le format such as MP4. ey
also oen are published on video-sharing sites
such as YouTube. ey are not, however, based
on moving video images, although besides still
imagery, they may include short video clips,
and they oen use animations which imitate
the movements of a video camera.
Although the nal digital story might not
include more text than the title and credits of
the story, writing is an essential part of the
production process. Stories are written – typ-
ically in a first-person narrative – and then
recorded and added to the video as a voice-
over audio track. This is what distinguishes
the form of the digital story from a photo
slideshow with text or music.
Participatory video experiments
as a predecessor
e concepts of participatory media and par-
ticipatory journalism have been used to re-
fer both to participatory practices within the
mainstream media, where amateur partici-
pants collaborate with professional journalists8
and to those forms of media produced entirely
or mainly by amateurs and then published and
disseminated outside the mainstream media.9
e latter alternatively are referred to as user-
generated or user-created content, as commu-
nity media, grassroots media, radical media,
alternative media/journalism, citizens’ media,
or citizen journalism.10
Here I use the concept of participatory me-
dia in the latter sense, dening it as those me-
dia practices in which ordinary people (as op-
posed to media professionals) produce media
content individually or in groups, either in-
dependently and on their own initiative or in
institutionally initiated projects with the help
of and/or training from media professionals. I
prefer using this term (instead of journalism)
because a large part of the content produced
by amateurs does not meet the conventional
criteria of journalism and the producers may
not even aspire to do so.
One example of participatory media prac-
tices, which precedes digital storytelling, is
33
Engagement and Empowerment
participatory video (PV). e rst participa-
tory video experiments date to the end of the
1960s. PV essentially is a community-based
practice in which community members, either
individually or in groups, create short videos
on issues of concern to the community. ese
videos then are shown to the wider communi-
ty and sometimes to decision-makers outside
the community. is practice aims at raising
awareness and empowering the community to
solve its problems.11 Other widespread forms
of participatory media from the era before
the digital revolution include community ra-
dio and different forms of alternative print
media.12
Digital storytelling can be regarded as a
form of participatory media or as a “digital-era
version” of PV practice. It shares several ide-
als and goals with other participatory media
initiatives, such as the will to democratise
production of media contents, the goal of
engaging and empowering citizens and com-
munities, and the emphases on the impor-
tance of the process and participation over
the product.13
Digital storytelling, however, has some
unique characteristics such as the emphasis
on personal autobiographical stories. Anoth-
er distinctive feature is the strong reliance
on facilitated workshops – which is typical
of participatory video practices. at is why
some authors have pointed out, that unlike
many genuinely ‘bottom-up’ practices of pro-
ducing and sharing user-generated content
online, DST typically is an institutionally led
and professionally facilitated practice.14 ese
characteristics connect DST to various arts-
based methods, and DST could be considered
to be one.15
Yet another distinctive feature, especially
in relation to many community radio and PV
projects, is the seemingly individualistic na-
ture of digital stories, as they oen focus on
personal life experiences. Digital storytelling
does not, however, need to be limited to in-
dividual creativity and self-expression; it can
just as well be used as a form of community
media. DST workshops can be targeted at a
specic community with the purpose of deal-
ing with and finding solutions to problems
facing the community or documenting the
shared history and tradition of a community.16
Uses of digital storytelling
Digital storytelling workshops typically are
organised in some sort of institutional en-
vironment. In dierent parts of the world, DST
activities have been commonly carried out by
schools, universities, libraries, museums, com-
munity centres, civil society organizations, de-
velopment or youth projects, and public broad-
casters.17
In Nordic countries, DST has been exper-
imented on and contributed to over the years
by several higher education institutions and
by some private companies and cooperatives.18
Various other organizations – such as schools,
libraries, public broadcasters, and civil soci-
ety organisations – have participated in DST
initiatives. Knut Lundby19 surveyed some ex-
amples of early DST initiatives in Sweden and
Nor w ay.
In Finland, the rst documented DST ac-
tivities took place in 2006 as part of the YLE
Mundo project of the Finnish Broadcasting
Com pany, 20 and DST started to arouse more
attention and interest in the beginning of
2010s. Digital storytelling workshops so far
have been mostly organised in the framework
of various projects. Some workshops have
been targeted at professionals, volunteers, or
students who might use digital storytelling
as a tool in their professional or volunteer
work,21 and some have been organised for
specic target groups such as immigrants or
youth.22 In Finland, students of universities
of applied sciences have shown considerable
interest in adopting DST as a professional tool,
experimenting in their thesis projects on using
it for various occupational purposes.
Adaptability of the digital storytelling
model makes it a useful tool for different
projects, elds, professions, institutions, and
target groups. Sometimes its activities have
been carried out in local workshops where
anyone interested in storytelling and learning
new skills could participate.23 In many cases,
however, it has been used as a tool to serve
broader objectives of the organization or the
34
Pirita Juppi
project which hosts the workshop. In those
cases, digital storytelling may be a more guid-
ed process, and the workshop and storytelling
activities may be framed with a more or less
explicit theme. e participants may be given
a specic topic or a prompt which is in line
with the workshop purpose and which guides
the development of the story.
In various projects and initiatives, digital
storytelling has been used to reect on one’s
cultural identity; document a community’s
history and cultural heritage; create a dialogue
between generations or social groups; for civic
engagement and community development,
personal growth and reection, activism and
advocacy; and for professional reection and
development.24 e DST method also has been
used in the context of health care and health
education to produce experiential knowledge
as an alternative to institutional, professional,
and expert knowledge.25
From the beginning of the digital story-
telling movement, a fundamental purpose has
been to bring out the voices of ordinary people
and especially of various marginalised groups
in a society.26 Oen marginalised means vari-
ous minority groups, such as ethnic minorities
or sexual minorities, but it can just as well refer
to any vulnerable and disadvantaged groups
who do not have a voice or who are under-rep-
resented in the mainstream media. Depending
on the social, cultural, and political context,
these could include groups such as youth,
women, elderly people, homeless people, poor
people, or people with mental illness.
In Finland and other Nordic countries, two
vulnerable groups which have been in the fo-
cus of several digital storytelling projects – or
projects which use DST as one tool – have
been asylum seekers and immigrants27 and
young people in general or youth at risk of
social exclusion.28
Empowerment through
storytelling
Like participatory media projects more gener-
ally, digital storytelling initiatives oen aim at
empowerment of the participating individuals
and groups by encouraging and enabling them
to get engaged in issues that aect their lives
and their community. Some DST workshops
are designed specifically to deal with issues
of concern to the participating community
and to nd solutions to them through shared
storytelling. In other cases, stories created in
workshops may deal with more personal issues
and provide support to personal development.
Empowerment is a somewhat problematic
concept with varying uses and denitions.29
Despite of its shortcomings, it is a useful con-
cept when attempting to describe and under-
stand positive transformations in individuals
and communities which can be induced or
enhanced by participatory media projects.
Empowerment refers both to the empow-
erment process and its outcomes.30 In the
context of digital storytelling, digital empow-
erment31 provides a useful conceptual starting
point. According to Mäkinen,32 digital em-
powerment is an empowerment-as-enable-
ment process in which technology is used to
enhance empowerment which includes two
essential aspects simultaneously: 1) increased
personal growth, individual competence, and
control over one’s life, and 2) improved capacity
to participate and act as an active citizen.
In addition, the concept of psychological
empowerment33 may be helpful for under-
standing those positive intrapersonal and
interactional/interpersonal transformations
which may occur along the process of reect-
ing on and narrating one’s experiences and
sharing the story with other workshop par-
ticipants. For Zimmerman,34 psychological
empowerment includes ‘beliefs that goals can
be achieved, awareness about resources and
factors that hinder or enhance one’s efforts
to achieve those goals, and efforts to fulfill
the goals’.35 e intrapersonal component of
psychological empowerment involves people’s
perceptions of their control, competence, and
ecacy, whereas the interactional component
refers to their conceptions of their community
and socio-political issues and environment.36
Naturally, the empowerment potential
of digital storytelling is not actualised in all
cases – not in all workshops and not with all
individuals. Facilitators have a great responsi-
bility to create the kind of safe and supportive
35
Engagement and Empowerment
space, atmosphere, and process which could
make the empowerment process possible, but
everything does not depend on the facilitators
alone. Aer all, one cannot force empower-
ment on someone.37 So much depends on the
participants themselves: their perceptions,
motivations, and willingness to share their
experiences.
I will look at the empowering potential of
digital storytelling on a more concrete level in
the following sections, illustrating the issues
with some case examples.
Developing digital skills
Although at the heart of digital storytelling
practice is the art of storytelling and not digi-
tal media technology,38 creating one’s own
digital story almost inevitably builds the digi-
tal skills of the storyteller. By digital skills I
refer to both the technical and creative skills
involved in using digital media tools for crea-
tive expression and communication.39 In some
cases, skill-building can be an explicit objec-
tive of a workshop, in others it is simply a by-
product of the storytelling activity.
In particular, educational institutions at
dierent levels have used digital storytelling
as a tool for learning digital skills and various
literacies.40 Several studies have shown that
DST is an effective pedagogical tool. It de-
velops multiple literacies (e.g. media literacy,
visual literacy, digital literacy), information
and communications technology (ICT) and
digital media skills, storytelling skills, oral and
written communication skills, collaborative
skills, and conceptual and critical thinking
skills. Moreover, it enhances learning of in-
structional, subject-related content in formal
education.41
Apart from schools, digital storytelling
has been used for skill-building with groups
which might be in a disadvantaged position
in terms of their ICT and digital media skills,
such as elderly people (Kirjastot.fi), people
over 50 and unemployed,42 asylum seekers and
immigrants,43 and young people in developing
countries.44
Learning new digital skills is not signi-
cant per se – it rather is the things people can
do with those skills. In information societies,
possessing sufficient digital skills and liter-
acies has become one of the prerequisites of
social inclusion, civic engagement, and demo-
cratic participation.45 As Mäkinen46 points out,
however, learning new technology can start
the empowering process but does not directly
lead to digital empowerment, which is a more
complex process through which people gain
access to social networks, communicate and
cooperate, and learn to act as active citizens.
Our experience from a DST workshop
for young adults in RLabs Iringa, Tanzania47
showed that learning new digital skills can be
a very empowering experience for partici-
pants. Learning new skills was something
the participants valued a lot and were excit-
ed about, and having new digital media skills
made them feel optimistic about their future
prospects. e participants’ perceived self-ef-
cacy was very high in the end.
Even if a person’s perceptions of their digi-
tal skills do not reect reality (the actual skills)
completely accurately, from the perspective
of empowerment, perceived self-ecacy may
be even more signicant because it provides
a motivation for continued digital engage-
ment.48 In other words, if the experience of
creating a digital story makes the storyteller
believe they are capable of creating digital
stories, and moreover, through their stories
they can make a meaningful contribution to
digital content online, they are more likely to
continue using the newly learned skills.
Self-reection and
self-representation
In the context of digital storytelling, self-
representation can be understood in two
complementary ways. First, it can refer to the
opportunity of ordinary people to speak for
themselves (to represent themselves) through
digital stories, instead of being spoken for and
represented by someone else, as ordinary citi-
zens and various marginalised groups of soci-
ety oen are in the mainstream media. is has
to do with having a voice and being listened to.
Secondly, the concept of self-representa-
tion describes the ways digital storytellers use
36
Pirita Juppi
digital stories to construct and define their
identities and to represent their “selves” and
their lives to others. Lambert49 believes that
the appeal of DST lies in the fact that the prac-
tice responds to our need to constantly present
and explain our changing identities to other
people, and many scholars have been interest-
ed in the self-representational dimension of
DST. 50 Lundby51 even sees this as an inherent
attribute of digital stories – because they are
based on the storyteller’s life, they are self-rep-
resentational stories.
is is, of course, not that dierent from
how people nowadays are constantly narrating
and performing their identities in social me-
dia. Digital storytelling, however, is a rather
structured practice in which participants use
considerable amounts of time to create sto-
ries, making use of their personal materials
in the process. erefore, one can assume that
the process is more reective and that the re-
sulting self-representations are more carefully
constructed than fairly spontaneous utteranc-
es or seles in social networking sites.
e process of creating an autobiographical
digital story provides a unique opportunity for
recollection and reection on the significant
life events, experiences, and emotions relat-
ed to them. Just going through an old pho-
to album or digital photo archives to collect
material for the story can bring back vivid
memories. Looking at pictures can spark im-
pressions and thoughts beyond the conscious
level, and pictures may even arouse sensations
of smells, sounds, rhythms, or physical feel-
ings.52 Verbalising the experiences, thoughts,
and feelings through narrative writing – to
create the script for the digital story – has a
similar power to other forms of creative, ex-
pressive, and autobiographic writing, and thus
it may enhance self-awareness, self-assurance,
self-esteem, and self-determination.53
Digital storytelling workshops can encour-
age participants to reflect on and represent
dierent aspects of their identities, lived expe-
riences, and goals and dreams for the future.
In the Näkymättömät – Nuorten digitarinat
(e Invisible – Digital Stories of Young Peo-
ple) project, we have experimented with using
digital storytelling and other autobiographical,
arts-based methods to engage and enhance
empowerment of young people who are either
out of school and work or at critical transition
phases of education. e explicit objectives
of these DST workshops included enhancing
self-assurance and positive thinking of the
participating young people by making them
reect on their strengths and potential; and
amplifying positive future orientation by en-
couraged participants to think of, write about,
and visualize their dreams. Depending on the
participating group and their life situations,
and of the institutional context of the particu-
lar workshop, digital storytelling was framed
with topics such as My Dream, My Strengths,
or e Best Possible Future.
In the workshop in RLabs Iringa, DST
was used – besides for skill-building – for
amplifying participants’ sense of positive
self-transformation and life change. Partici-
pants were asked to create stories about the
change they experienced as a result of the six-
month GROW Leadership Academy training
they had just completed. We expected that
reflecting on positive changes would make
participants more aware of them and that
sharing their positive stories with others in
the community would amplify their sense of
empowerment. e participants’ digital stories
indeed were stories of newly acquired skills,
newly discovered self-condence and sense of
direction, and above all, of hope. Participants
found the process of creating their story to be
a rewarding one.54
Besides focusing on individual identities
and personal aspirations, digital storytelling
can be used as a tool for professional reection
and construction of professional identity. e
Arts Academy of Turku University of Applied
Sciences has used digital storytelling as one
method in a professional autobiographical
process which is an integral part of Master of
Arts students’ studies in the Arts Academy.
Having a voice and being
listened to
Another important aspect of digital story-
telling which contributes to empowerment
of participants is the social, interactional, in-
37
Engagement and Empowerment
tersubjective, and communicative aspect of
sharing personal stories. It is not enough to
just “have a voice” (to create a digital story)
– it is just as important that someone actually
listens to it.
Low and colleagues55 emphasize the im-
portance of the experience of being listened
to in digital storytelling and other commu-
nity-based participatory media practices. For
them, listening is an active, ethical, and mu-
tual engagement, and it is precisely this rela-
tional experience of intersubjective listening
which explains the transformative effect of
storytelling.
Many facilitators have noted the same: e
experience of sharing their storyline ideas and
completed stories within a group, in a support-
ive and safe environment, often is the most
important aspect of DST for workshop par-
ticipants.56 Being listened to in the workshop
group can be much more meaningful than hav-
ing one’s story published online for potential
outside audiences to see. Low and colleagues57
even argue that if the expected audience ex-
pands beyond the workshop space, the experi-
ence becomes less intimate, and telling dicult
stories may not be possible for the participants.
rough the ve DST workshops organ-
ised for young people in Turku region in the
Näkymättömät – Nuorten digitarinat project,
we learned the importance of sharing and lis-
tening within the safe space of the workshop.
In the beginning of the project, we conceived
“having a voice” and “becoming visible” in
terms of the mainstream media and publicity,
putting emphasis on the nal digital stories
produced in the workshops and hoping to
have as many as possible published online.
Working closely with young people facing var-
ious challenges in their lives taught us that
what actually may matter more to the partici-
pants is being listened to during the workshop
process by other participants and by the adults
who facilitate the workshop or participate in
it with the young people. e latter meant the
teachers, tutors, or others who already were
familiar with the young participants and who
cooperated with us in planning the workshop.
On the other hand, depending on the par-
ticipating group and on how they perceive
themselves and their position in relation to
other social groups (potential audiences),
showing the digital stories to people outside
the workshop group and/or publishing them
online for anyone to see may be an important
aspect of the experience.58 ere are individual
dierences: Some storytellers may use stories
for private self-reection and don’t want to
share them with others, whereas others think
of the potential audience from the beginning
and use their stories for communicating and
connecting to others.59
Cultural dierences also may have an im-
pact on the willingness to share experiences
with a wider audience. In the DST workshop
organised in RLabs Iringa, all the participants
were happy to publish their stories online and
felt it was important to share their stories out-
side the group. Participants were very aware
of the communicative aspect of digital story-
telling: ey felt that their stories would make
other people understand their realities, and
other people could learn from their experienc-
es – of how to face and overcome challenges of
life – and be encouraged by them.60
In the Näkymättömät – Nuorten digitarinat
project, we learned that groups of young peo-
ple are very dierent from each other in terms
of their willingness to open up and share ex-
periences in the group. In most workshops
organised in Turku region, participants were
happy to have their stories watched together
in the group at the end of the process, and
many of them also were willing to have their
stories published online. In one workshop,
however, participants were reluctant to even
share their stories in the group and kept their
stories rather impersonal.
According to our observations, the context
of the workshop (the hosting institution) and
the group atmosphere were decisive factors
for the motivation of the participating young
people and for their willingness to share ex-
periences in the group. Voluntary participa-
tion seems to be an important condition for
a successful workshop; if a DST workshop is
organised as part of obligatory activities of
an educational institution or a workshop for
unemployed young people, creating and sus-
taining motivation can be a challenge.61
38
Pirita Juppi
As Low and colleagues62 note, there also
is an emotional risk involved in sharing your
story with other people. Someone struggling
with their life and having trouble trusting oth-
er people might not be willing to take that risk.
Young people regarded as “at risk of social
exclusion” especially may have experiences of
encounters with adults in various institutional
contexts which do not make them willing to
trust adults and open up to them.
Concluding remarks
e media ecosystem and media culture seem
drastically dierent today compared to the sit-
uation more than 20 years ago when the digi-
tal storytelling model rst was developed. In
the context of the current participatory digital
culture based on “bottom-up” participation,63
the idea of ordinary people being able to share
their views, experiences, and stories online
does not seem revolutionary anymore. Quite
the contrary – posting status updates, photos,
videos, blog posts, or podcasts online has be-
come a rather mundane activity for citizens of
information societies.
Regarding digital storytelling as just anoth-
er form of user-generated content is not doing
it justice, however. It misses something essen-
tial about the practice – namely the signi-
cance of the facilitated group process, as well
as the personal and oen emotional nature of
digital stories created and shared in the work-
shop. Even if at the macro level of the current
media ecosystem, digital storytelling is not a
game-changing practice, at the micro level of
participating individuals and communities it
can be an emotionally powerful experience
which may enhance empowerment. From the
participants’ perspective, its signicance does
not depend on how many digital stories are
published online or how many viewers they
reach. For the storytellers, being listened to
during the workshop may be much more im-
portant.
As with other forms of participatory me-
dia, digital storytelling can serve many pur-
poses. It is what we do with digital storytell-
ing that matters the most. If the workshop is
planned carefully, based on the needs of the
target group, and implemented in the way that
best serves the specic purpose, digital sto-
rytelling has the potential to foster civic en-
gagement and community development, and
therefore, can have positive impacts beyond
the workshop participants.
Notes
1. Burgess (2006), Hartley & McWilliam (2009, 5),
Lundby (2008, 2–4).
2. Hartley & McWilliam (2009, 5), Meadows (2003,
192).
3. CDS (2014).
4. Juppi (2012, 2015a, 2015b).
5. Meadows (2003, 192).
6. Hartley & McWilliam (2009, 3), Lambert (2009a,
1–10), Lambert (2009c).
7. Lambert (2009b, 25).
8. Carpentier (2003), Deuze (2008).
9. Bowman & Willis (2003, 9).
10. Atton (2002, 2003, 2009), Downing, Ford, Gil &
Stein (2001), Rodriquez (2001).
11. Lunch & Lunch (2006), Shaw & Robertson (1997).
12. Atton (2002), Downing et al. (2001), Fraser & Es-
trada (2001).
13. Downing et al. (2001), Rodriquez (2001).
14. Brake (2008), Hartley (2010).
15. Tonteri et al. (2013).
16. McWilliam (2009).
17. Hartley & McWilliam (2009, 5), Lambert (2009a,
91–104), McWilliam (2009).
18. ese include at least Digital Storylab in Denmark
(still active), Digitalbridge in Sweden (contact info
available at www.merinfo.se but no active online
presence), and Be.Tell (closed down) and Osuus-
kunta Glokaali (exists but is not active) in Finland.
e author of this article is a member of the coop-
erative Osuuskunta Glokaali and was active in its
digital storytelling training and workshop activities
in 2011–2014, while on a leave from Turku Univer-
sity of Applied Sciences.
19. Lundby (2009).
20. YLE Mundo (2006).
21. Kohtaamo (2012), Koivuporras-Masuka (2013),
Medios (2010).
22. Määttä et al. (2015), Näkymättömät (2015), Raunio
& Juppi (2012), YLE Mundo (2006).
23. Meadows (2003), Meadows & Kidd (2009).
24. Lambert (2009a, 91–104), McWilliam (2009), Sto-
ryCenter (2017).
25. Hill (2004), Patient Voices (2004).
39
Engagement and Empowerment
26. Burgess (2006), Lundby (2008, 2–4).
27. Juppi (2012), López-Becha & Zúñiga (2017), T&D
Stories (2015).
28. Hemgård (2017), Herzberg Kaare (2008), Herzberg
Kaare & Lundby (2008), Määttä et al. (2015), Nä-
kymättömät (2015).
29. Siitonen (1999, 82–93).
30. Zimmerman (1995); see also Siitonen (1999, 93).
31. Mäkinen (2006, 2009).
32. Mäkinen (2009, 24, 102).
33. Zimmerman (1995).
34. Zimmerman (1995).
35. Zimmerman (1995, 582).
36. Zimmerman (1995, 588–589); see also Speer
(2000).
37. Siitonen (1999, 93).
38. Hartley & McWilliam (2009), Lundby (2008, 3).
39. Juppi (2015b).
40. McWilliam (2009, 39–53).
41. Czarnecki (2009), Gregory & Steelman (2008), Li
(2007), Niemi et al. (2014), Robin (2008), Smeda
et al. (2014), Sylvester & Greenidge (2009).
42. See Turku AMK (2017).
43. Juppi (2012), T&D Stories (2015).
44. Juppi (2015a, 2015b), Reed & Hill (2010).
45. Livingstone (2004), Mäkinen (2006, 2009), War-
schauer (2004).
46. Mäkinen (2006, 2009).
47. Juppi (2015a, 2015b).
48. Juppi (2015b).
49. Lambert (2009a, 14–15).
50. Brushwood Rose (2009), Kaare & Lundby (2008),
Nelson & Hull (2008), umim (2009).
51. Lundby (2008, 5).
52. Hentinen (2009, 42).
53. Hunt & Sampson (1998, 2006), Lindquist (2009).
54. Juppi (2015a).
55. Low et al. (2016).
56. Meadows & Kidd (2009, 106–107).
57. Low et al. (2016).
58. Burgess (2006), Juppi (2015b), Thumin (2008,
89–91).
59. umim (2008, 89–91).
60. Juppi (2015a, 2015b).
61. Cf. Määttä et al. (2015).
62. Low et al. (2016).
63. Deuze (2008), Jenkins (2004).
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