Digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency

Abstract

This article explores using digital storytelling as community-based participatory research methodology with twelve secondary school learners in a rural community in South Africa who had experienced, witnessed, or heard about HIV- and AIDS-related stigma. It explores the question of how digital storytelling can enable secondary school learners in a rural community to identify, describe and address HIV- and AIDS-related stigma. The learners produced digital stories and written reflections, and also engaged in focus group discussions. My focus is on the way in which digital storytelling created a critical space of participation and, in so doing, enabled the learner participants to identify and address issues related to HIV- and AIDS-related stigma as well as enabling them to take charge of effecting change in their community. My fieldwork experience encouraged me to think more critically about using digital storytelling in community-based research.