Digital storytelling as a 'discursively ordered domain'

This paper examines the discursive construction and institutional mediation of two major digital storytelling programs in Australia. The purpose of this approach is to develop an understanding of Australian digital storytelling as a discursively ordered domain, in Selsky et al's (2003) summation of it. In investigating digital storytelling as such a domain, we can begin to uncover the complex interrelationships "between text, discourse, sensemaking and actions", which will ultimately reveal how digital storytelling is actively "mapped", or discursively configured, by all those involved in the production of (in this case Australian) digital stories (1734). Drawing on both discursive and textual analyses, I focus on the two most significant digital storytelling programs currently in operation in Australia: the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s digital storytelling program—which has been part of the cultural institution's media education program since its 2002 opening—and tallstoreez productionz's "Directing the Hero Within" program, the largest Australian digital storytelling program targeted at youth. I identify key divergences between the discursive constructions of digital storytelling within these programs, including the material effects of those differences, before drawing a series of conclusions about Australian digital storytelling as a discursively ordered domain