The Innerworkings of Digital Storytelling

Traditionally, storytelling was used for entertainment and the transfer of know-how. The advent of digital media gave rise to new possibilities for telling stories. When the context is, for example, to relay information about how to protect a person from COVID-19, it is referred to as serious storytelling. The main objective of this research was to establish what skills and attributes would be required for someone to autonomously “tell” a serious digital story in a resource constrained environment. A systematic literature review of peer reviewed articles resulted in a knowledge bank of articles. Atlas Ti was used to qualitatively analyse these articles. Even though a resource constrained environment may be a limiting factor for telling a digital story, this research has found that emotional support, digital inclusion, as well as assisting individuals with their devices, can pave the way to autonomous digital storytelling.