Interactive/Transmedia Documentary:

Convergence Culture Meets Actuality Storytelling

Abstract

This article explores the development of actuality storytelling through the vehicle of immersive, participatory, user-driven, multi-platform interactive documentary. What emerges is an evolving mediated literacy in response to evolving storytelling technologies  melding with the rise of ‘convergence culture’ that is (re)making the way we experience stories. The result is a reclaiming of storytelling from the Culture Industry along with the rise of a new ecology of narrativity for telling compelling, interactive stories. Furthermore, the participatory nature of this evolving narratology assigns different roles to ‘author,’ ‘subject,’ and ‘participant’—each of whom are immersed in the narrative discourse and actively engaged in co-constructing the actuality (i.e., ‘truth’) through the act of storytelling itself.