Interactive Documentary as Form of Public Narrative in Digital Age

Abstract

This paper examines how migration crises in North America are represented in two award-winning interactive documentary projects—Borderland and Roxham. Through various combinations of images, texts, video, surface designs and visual presentation, those two both portray detailed stories and imply critical point of views. Based on reflection on interactivity, hypertextuality, multimediality that afforded by digital technology, this project is guided by the main research question: how do features of interactive documentary enable this non-linear storytelling structure to be a new form of public narrative? With the analysis of Borderland and Roxham as case studies, remixes of multimedia visual elements, narrative structures, contributions from users and variation in user’s narrative routes are also discussed within sub-questions: how does the story of individual open emotional dialogue in those two projects? In what way users can experience the shared values through emotion that may lead to moral choice?
 
 Two projects are analyzed by Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to evaluate the structure of stories and interactivity constructed by moving images, perspectives, and storytelling. By tapping into the interlocking plots and the power of narrative, I argue that interactive documentary forms a unique public narrative when tackling social issues, allowing self-experience to intertwine with collective experience, and let individuals meet in this temporal public sphere through authorial expressivity, narrative routes and interactive participatory.