Narrative ephemera: documents in storytelling worlds
ISSN: 0022-0418
Article publication date: 29 July 2020
Issue publication date: 24 December 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Some virtual, immersive stories are filled with documents that users must locate and interact with to experience a narrative. Exploring a new area of inquiry in the information science field, this study focuses on individuals' experiences with documents in a particular 3D storytelling world.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative approach, this study examined user interactions with virtual documents to better understand the relationship between information behavior and narrative spaces. This study employed observations of users in a story-rich world, followed by semistructured interviews using virtual artifacts and stimulated recall.
Findings
Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study found that (1) environmental and personal influences, (2) the search and the narrative experience and (3) expectation and confirmation events surround a user's experiences with documents in storytelling worlds. These influences and experiences determine the user's relationship with these documents, which may be considered narrative ephemera – objects that a user accumulates to create and structure a story. This model of narrative ephemera depicts the user's search for narrative cadence, fulfillment of competence needs and visions of story events or the user's own lived experiences. Individuals may experience these phenomena from a single document, shifting back and forth between the designers' intentions and the users' own realities.
Originality/value
This study represents a first attempt to investigate information behavior in a distributed narrative space: a virtual world filled with documents. This study reveals that commonly employed information behavior theories, as well as literary and motivation theories, may be well suited for investigating story worlds. Continued research in this area of inquiry may benefit educators as well as designers of digital stories.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Dr. Heather Moulaison-Sandy and Dr. Jenny Bossaller for providing feedback during the development of this project and to the anonymous reviewers who improved the quality of this paper through their comments.
Citation
Urban, A.C. (2021), "Narrative ephemera: documents in storytelling worlds", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 77 No. 1, pp. 107-127. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2020-0058
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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