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174] Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education loneliness all appeared in their stories, highlighting the diseases complete impact on every aspect of their lives. The participants then looked for points of support and ways to deal with the situation: some suggested support organizations, while others mentioned the acceptance of family and partners. The method helped the individuals to move away from a negative self-identity, improve their self-esteem and control their negative emotions. Through the formulation of goals and perspectives, the group members became aware of their own agency, which was extended to individual and later social acts (Willis et al., 2014). In the case of HIV-positive children in Tanzania, a Story Circle was followed by the co-creation of hypothetical future-oriented texts that were acted out and recorded by the children. In an attempt to interpret their stigmatized and marginalized situation from a more optimistic perspective, the children formulated plans for their own futures (Duveskog et al., 2012). When dealing with sensitive issues, care should be taken as it is possible that in the process of processing painful memories, individuals may be retraumatized or their story may traumatize another group member. Considering these cases, such workshops should not be run without a psychologist to ensure its therapeutic effect. When touching on sensitive topics, the facilitator should make the participants aware that they can stop the process at any time, that they do not have to tell a story just because others find it exciting, that the finished story will not be published without their consent, and that they do not have to fear the judgement of others. In addition, the facilitator should ask the workshop participants to keep the conversations confidential and not to reveal anything to others outside the group. The facilitator should ask the clients if they are able to work with images related to their trauma; if not, facilitators can communicate drawings or symbols can be used instead of photos (Ward & Bullivant, 2017). 3.3 Helping Professionals’ Training There have been numerous experiments and creative projects in which helping professionals have used DST to make a difference for their clients and in the wider social context. The Silver Stories program, a two-year collaboration between six countries, brought together a group of elderly individuals to create digital stories. Humanistic gerontology is a personcentered interdisciplinary field that brings together interpretive approaches from psychology, anthropology, and sociology to develop a new approach to the issue of caring for people with dementia. The aim of the program was to explore the lives and experiences of older people through stories. In the process, the elderly participants were asked to create stories through constructing contexts and revisiting their relationships. The digital stories they produced were widely shared: first among themselves and then within their families. Finally, the videos were introduced into the higher education
