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Part V. Digital Media and Storytelling in University Courses ] 161
define their belonging and identity (Lambert, 2002/2013). Pratt worked with
her mother to create a digital story about her own grandmother, who was
an important figure in a small community. The process of DST broke many
emotional barriers for family members, who then shared many of their family
stories. The community and tradition-building power of intergenerational
dialogue brought out stories from the participants that had not been told
to anyone else, and group identity was formed based on the stories of the
community’s past.
Stories linked to small local communities have a personal and emotional
component. DST can also be used as a marketing communication tool to
reach target audiences, with the advantage of facilitating the involvement of
decision-makers and target audience members in the co-creation process. Such
videos can feature tourists or residents telling stories about their experiences
in a region or describing local customs. Ifa digital story is interesting enough,
it will be shared on social media (Clara & Barbosa, 2021). Digital stories are a
powerful tool for online branding, as their compact video format is conducive
to social media distribution. It is a form of corporate self-representation
whose narrative has a direct impact on target audiences, using both images
and text to support a products values (Lund et al., 2018).
It is not only the history of the place which has market value for tourism but
also the legends surrounding a local hero. Many museums and theme parks
promote their services through mythmaking (Mitev, 2015); one such example
is the Aquincum Museum in Budapest, which implemented transmedia
storytelling. Visitors were able to explore the temporary exhibition objects in
the museum and could also discover what it was like to be a Roman warrior
through an interactive video game. In addition, thematic educational sessions
at the museum retold the story of the ancient era. The storyworld could be
further extended with related feature films and social media posts.
The elevator pitch is a particularly effective tool for communicating personal
brands on social media. The evocative name refers to the phenomenon
where a businessperson has only the amount of time spent in an elevator
to deliver his or her marketing message. As such, the pitch texts must be
extremely concise, understandable, and at the same time informative and
attention-grabbing. Combining DST and the concept of the elevator pitch is
an effective way to build and promote a personal brand. Spanish students (n =
49) created a professional LinkedIn profile, where they uploaded their digital
pitch stories in English. The text for the pitch had to remain within Twitter's
maximum length of 280 characters. The students had to take care to present
their competencies and goals through synthesis and narrative structure. In
order to do this, the 6-sentence pitch technique was used, which included
(1) a general description of the situation; (2) the presentation of the ongoing
situation with its challenges and opportunities; (3) the presentation of the
turning point; (4-5) challenge-solution; and (6) the conclusion. The students
completed the task creatively: almost all the videos included the typical visual