Interactive documentary and its limited opportunities to persuade.

The interactive digital documentary has attracted both enthusiasm and analysis among documentarians, festival programmers and academics, and has been associated with social-action goals of engagement and activism. This article focuses on the claims to interactivity of several interactive documentaries with social-action purposes made between 2008 and 2013, through the lens of navigation. The article considers the implications of simple v. global navigation, the use of metaphor in navigation, and match with interactive objectives. The article concludes that navigation techniques are used that mimic earlier formats, and that user interactivity is currently limited largely to consumer choice, across a range of approaches. The experimental nature of the moment is noted.

Studies in Documentary Film, 2012

This article articulates the authors' combined vision behind convening i-Docs, the first international symposia to focus exclusively on the rapidly evolving field of interactive documentary. In so doing, it provides a case study of practice-driven research, in which discussion around the act of developing and making interactive documentaries is seen as being a necessary prerequisite to subsequent theorizing in relation to their impact on the continuing evolution of the documentary genre. As an essentially interdisciplinary form of practice, the article provides a conceptual overview of what interactive documentaries (i-docs) are, where they come from and what they could become. The case is made that i-docs should not be seen as the uneventful evolution of documentaries in the digital realm but rather as a form of nonfiction narrative that uses action and choice, immersion and enacted perception as ways to construct the real, rather than to represent it. The relationship between authorship and agency within i-docs is also considered as being central to our understanding of possibilities within a rapidly evolving field of study.

2013

The linear filmic documentary genre has developed differentiated strategies of representing, ordering and negotiating 'reality'; 'New Media' offer interaction, collaboration, navigation and participation. Interactive documentaries (idocs) combine 'the best of both'. Thus they expand the primarily cognitive understanding of the world 'represented' to physical, emotional and social engagement. This shift, however, challenges basic assumptions of documentary-makingespecially the notion of 'authorship.' The aim of this paper is to give an overview over the spectrum of major options of interaction currently employed in idocs. Combining Nichols' modes of representation with theories of interaction, it proposes a matrix that allows us to analyze the implications of different strategies as to the role of the 'author', the degree of participation of the 'viewer/user', and the potential of idoc as a revealing, preserving, interrogating and experience-shaping genre. 1 Introduction: 'i-what?'-or: 'interactive documentaries' as a fuzzy emerging genre Interactive documentaries (idocs), a hypermedia, most often multiplatform genre that first appeared in French-Canadian mediascapes, can be described as rather 'fuzzy': Still lacking academic consideration we are missing clear definitions, operative systems of classification and analysis. From documentary platforms in the internet and educational CD-ROM material, browsable archives and wikimentary to serious games, G4C, history games and locative media; from non-fiction database narratives, web-reportage to participatory social community projects, multimedia art and AR-museum guidesthe label 'idoc' is applied to a vast spectrum of genres that somehow use digital, interactive, so-called 'New Media' to make account of 'reality'. Sowhat artifacts are we dealing with when we are speaking of 'interactive documentaries' in the following? Two factors arein our opinioncrucial in qualifying an artifact as an 'idoc': 1 First of all, digital technology must be employed in a way to incite some kind of interaction between the 'author', the 'user' 2 and the 'artifact'. And secondly, the artifact must intend to document a factual or emotional situationi.e. establish a more or less indexical relation with 'reality'. 2 Theoretical Background-Or: 'Traditional Documentary' meets 'New Media'' 2.1 Essential logics of linear documentary: Nichols' 'modes of representation' The (filmic) documentary genre has developed differentiated ways to 'represent' reality. Bill Nichols, one of the founding-fathers of documentary theory, describes these different strategies "of organizing texts (i.e. documentaries) in relation to certain recurrent features or conventions" by distinguishing between six basic 'modes of representation': 3  poetic mode: emphasizes visual associations, tonal or rhythmic qualities;  expository mode: emphasizes verbal commentary and an argumentative logic;  observational mode: emphasizes a direct engagement with the everyday life of subjects as observed by an unobtrusive camera;  participatory mode: emphasizes the interaction between filmmaker and subject; 1 I am hereby concordant with Sandra Gaudenzi who applied comparable categories in order to compile a corpus for her research on idocs as 'Living Documentary'. Cf. Gaud2012.

This essay argues for the role of actor–network theory and other recent manifestations of the ‘new materialism’ in how we undertake interactive documentary theory. It advocates for a new term, computational nonfiction, as a way to broaden the ways we engage with nonfiction practice on computers.

Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies

Documentary has been so closely associated with the mediums of film and television that the emergence of new forms of documentary, made for computerized mediums such as the Internet, mobile phones and tablets appear fundamentally transformative. The potential for audiences to interact with documentary in various ways is at the heart of what makes these new modes of documentary distinctive; audiences are potentially able to engage in a range of practices from navigating virtual environments, to choosing video content from a database, taking part in ‘chat’ sessions and creating content. Engaging theoretically with these emerging audience practices raises questions about authorship and the social impact of documentary. In this paper, interactivity and participation are considered from a social perspective. It is suggested that there is a need to distinguish between user actions that impact on the documentary text and the ability of users to engage with others through documentary. The concept of documentary voice is interrogated to reveal two distinct dimensions: voice-as-authorship and voice-as-social participation. Drawing on documentary and digital media scholarship, this paper explores the social functions of documentary interactivity and participation with reference to a range of web-documentary examples

Recommended citation: Gifreu-Castells A. (2022). Interactive Documentary as a Narrative Form of Expression. Towards a Second Birth and Institutionalization. En Á. Rocha, D. Barredo, P.C. López-López e I. Puentes-Rivera (eds), Communication and Smart Technologies. ICOMTA 2021. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 259 (pp. 424-434). Springer, Singapore. ISBN: 978-981-16-5791-7. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5792-4_42 ---- ABSTRACT: This work analyses the evolution of the documentary genre in the new media by characterizing four periods: appearance, emergence and experimentation, consolidation and diversification. First, we define the range of new media applied to the documentary genre based on theories that propose certain important milestones in the evolution of digital interactive documentary. Second, we present an original proposal for a chronological evolution divided into four stages or specific periods, in which we outline the main elements that constitute each stage and that have made the next stage possible. We believe that this format is experiencing a second birth and moving towards institutionalisation with the aim of differentiating itself from its audiovisual counterpart and becoming a narrative form of expression with its own identity.

Recommended citation: Gifreu, Arnau (2011). “The Interactive Documentary. Definition Proposal and Basic Features of the New Emerging Genre”. McLuhan Galaxy Conference. Conference Proceedings, ISBN: [ISBN 978-84-938802-1-7] ---------------- ABSTRACT ENG: The purpose of this paper is to explore some topics regarding the convergence between the fields of the audiovisual documentary and the interactive documentary. A new definition proposal for the new emerging genre, the so-called “interactive documentary”, is argued, compared with the logic of creating and producing linear documentaries. A taxonomy of the main characteristics of the new genre is also established from three points of view: the director, the text and the interactor. At the end, some considerations about evolving perspectives of the new genre are presented.

The interpretation that nowadays dominates analysis of the relationship between film, television and the Internet is the idea that the Network transforms the relationship between audiences and media by strengthening the capacity of action of the public through the development of a " participatory culture ". This thesis is mainly based on the idea that the Internet provides a new space for " interpretive communities ", mostly visible through the activities of fans' groups, which weaken the traditional boundaries between production and reception. I try to challenge this by pointing out that the idea of an agency of spectators could be interpreted, in a fruitful way, in terms of pragmatic discussion and conflict of interpretations, as opposed to the theory of "semiotic democracy " (where each community makes its own meaning for itself but doesn't share much with others), to provide a more dynamic view of the reception process, considering that the " public sphere " is not only at stake after the reading but during the making of the meaning. The public sphere determines how we " deliberate " with possible interpretations of a movie or a TV show, within ourselves and with other viewers. It allows us to understand that the Internet functions as a conflictual forum and not a juxtaposition of communities and separate meanings. A case study on the online discussion about a documentary on family planning, les bureaux de dieu, (God's Offices; Claire Simon, 2008) helped therefore to substitute the notion of " deliberative aggregates " to " interpretive communities " to show how Internet makes visible (and archivable) how this articulation between interpretation and public sphere may occur, thus enlarging the public sphere beyond possible predictable boundaries. I shall develop this point here in relation to the question of " inter-activity " when considering " interactive documentaries ". Are these interactive documentaries still " documentaries " ? How might these online platforms reveal the usual interactions between documentary materials and viewers, either off-line or online? What I shall argue here is that interactivity is not a way to balance the power between production and reception allowing the user to take control of the documentary, but rather an interesting way for the viewer to develop reflexivity, allowing him/her to become aware of its own deliberations and of the situation of a particular issue in a given social space.

2013

espanolLos documentales interactivos son narraciones digitales no lineales que utilizan los nuevos medios para relacionar y describir la realidad. Dado que esta forma de narracion factual solo se ha consolidado en los ultimos diez anos (su emergencia puede rastrearse a traves de la evolucion de la Web 2.0), podemos afirmar que se encuentra todavia en su infancia. En consecuencia, es flagrante la ausencia de terminologia y comprension de las caracteristicas especificas de dicha forma. Este articulo pretende situar los documentales interactivos como una forma en si misma (y no como una continuacion de los documentales lineales). Introduce asimismo el concepto de “Documental Vivo”, en el cual los documentales interactivos son encarados como “formas vivas”. Partiendo de la nocion de “autopoiesis” de Maturana y Varela, asi como de la teoria del ensamblaje de Deleuze, la definicion de “Documental Vivo” quiere hacer hincapie en el caracter relacional de los documentales interactivos y en s...