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62] Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
articles from print periodicals (e.g., newspapers, tabloid magazines, and
sports magazines).
Non-fiction narratives other than mainstream media communication can
also unfold in transmedia form. On its social media platforms, the German
broadcaster Deutsche Welle and ZDF regularly supplement their news and
documentary programs with digital stories, short video documentaries
and, vodcasts. Swedish Aftonbladet photographer Magnus Wennemann
photographed the children of refugee families and named his series Where
the children sleep. Wennemann took pictures of children sleeping in railway
stations and forests, writing a few sentences under the photos conveying the
story of their escape.” Reuters, on its Wider Image blog, supplements its news
with personal stories delivered through text and images. The Refugee families
European odyssey post tells the story of a refugee family’s persecution and
reunification”, while the Traces of migrants’ unfinished journeys post reveals
the tragedy of refugees drowned at sea through found objects (e.g., wedding
photos, mobile phones, necklaces).” The blog posts aim to break down the
stereotypes of their readers by diverging from the agenda-setting themes and
dominant perspectives found in mass media. Poverty and the lack of proper
sanitation in a broader sense were highlighted in the transmedia posts Around
the world in 45 toilets, which used an interactive map and photos to show 45
toilets from around the world.”
Another sub-genre of transmedia storytelling is immersive storytelling,
which offers additional elements to the narrative that can be received in
physical space through VR glasses or QR codes. The term immersive refers
to the fact that virtual storytelling is presented within the physical framework
- for example, as a supplement to a thematic museum exhibition or as a
supplement to a city walk (Pavlik & Bridges, 2013).
The Far Eastern media world has its own transmedia storytelling traditions.
Anime, the animated adaptation of Japanese manga, has a history going
back several decades. South Korea has created its own version of the comic
book genre, manhwa, which is designed for smart devices and utilizes a
narrative approach called webtoon, a fusion of the words web and cartoon.
South Korean manhwa artists work first appeared on websites in the 1990s.
The first webtoons were initially digital stories in which cartoon drawings
were used to tell the personal stories of their creators (Hancox, 2017, cf. Jin,
2020a). However, with the advent of smartphones, more and more specialized
webtoon portals appeared in South Korea where visual content dominated
and creators switched back from the audiovisual format to traditional drawn
comics. The webtoon interfaces are characterized by the fact that the scenes
are scrollable and arranged one below the other. The popularity of webtoons
2° http://darbarnensover.aftonbladet.se/chapter/english-version/
» http://widerimage.reuters.com/story/refugee-familys-european-odyssey
» http://widerimage.reuters.com/story/traces-of-migrants-unfinished-journeys
3 http://widerimage.reuters.com/story/around-the-world-in-45-toilets?utm_source=Facebook