Democratic Potentials and Social-Communicative Functions of Interactivity on Open Documentary Platforms Addressing Pressing Questions

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of open documentary projects on the web providing platforms for those affected by social problems to tell their stories. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, they gained significance as collaborative projects responding to pressing questions. They offered virtual spaces for community interaction and for the interactive negotiation of meanings and perceptions of reality, as face-to-face interactions on the ground became unfeasible. As networks of mutual support in times of uncertainty, they responded to the various needs of many people worldwide and in doing so avoided a hierarchical approach in favor of participatory, partly dialogical practices and a polyphonic form of presentation. This makes them interesting examples for the discussion of the democratic potentials and social-communicative functions of interactivity on such documentary platforms. This contribution analyzes two documentary projects: Corona Haikus (initiated by Sandra Gaudenzi and Sandra Tabares-Duque, 2020), launched as a Facebook group for visual poetry, and Corona Diaries (initiated by Francesca Panetta et al., 2020), a database for voice recordings. It argues that interactivity in the two examples first of all fosters democratic processes on the level of production and decision-making processes as well as on the level of meaning construction; further – as an adjacent claim – the paper suggests that the projects as complex assemblages allowed for the experience of virtual communities. By combining material analyses and praxeological analyses as well as drawing on approaches from political theory, philosophy, and social sciences in addition to the media studies-oriented analyses, the paper identifies the transformative dimension of collaborative interactive documentaries, especially in times of crisis. Despite different medial approaches with different advantages – visual poetry that encourages reflection and intimate voice recordings that enable affective, attentive listening –, both platforms function as a medial in-between that enables forms of collective identification and solidarity. The difference between Corona Haikus and Corona Diaries is: Corona Haikus uses the democratic potentials of the interactive communication network for collective negotiations of meanings, dialogue, and co-creation, while Corona Diaries focuses more on low participation thresholds for a – in terms of content – highly open space, which in turn does not allow for interactions among the participants. What the projects have in common is that the active participation in the open space without the classical hierarchies between professional media makers and subjects, the collective narrative processes, and the sharing of emotions can lead to the feeling of being part of a developing community, which in turn can help individual participants to cope with their experiences. Additionally, the nonlinear, polyphonic platforms open up new perspectives and relations not seen before. Another result of the paper is that future research should differentiate more nuancedly between forms of participation rather than arguing on the basis of an artificial distinction between interactivity and participation.