Applying Black Feminist Technopractice in Digital Storytelling at Cultural Sites

Abstract

We have been habituated to a type of story about Black American experience, and this habituation – the idea that we know a story before we encounter it – can influence how we embark on creating digital narratives for Black cultural and historic sites. The promise of digital media is that we might be able to tell fuller and richer stories; however, technical affordances can place the story in service of technology instead of the story being guided along by technology. Therefore, the ethical dilemma is how can a project, where agency and meaning-making are central concepts for success, be created for a topic that designers actually know little about? Cultural sensitivities need to be considered for digitally mediated cultural and historic environments and unintentional harm to both the story and the people who will come in contact with it can occur if adjustments are not made throughout the design process. These sensitivities will inevitably affect the scope of agency and meaning-making because the variables within the story are more fixed. While technological affordances can help remediate story habituation, in order to avoid some of the pitfalls of harmful storytelling, makers should consider theoretical frameworks to guide their practice. This essay proposes Black Feminist Techhnopractice as a theoretical framework to guide methods in creating interactive narratives for Black cultural sites. Black feminist technopractice is a theoretical framework that guides practices and essentially combines Black feminist design (researchers) and Black technoculture (participants) into a technopractice.