Finding a voice : digital storytelling as participatory development in Southeast Asia

This chapter is about the use of digital storytelling in a research project called "Finding a Voice", a multi-sited ethnographic study of - and experiment in - local participatory content creation. The project is made up of a research network of fifteen pre-existing local media and ICT initiatives in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The goal of Finding a Voice is to increase understanding of how ICT can be both effective and empowering in each local context, to investigate the most effective ways of articulating information and communication networks (both social and technological) to empower poor people to communicate their "voices" within and beyond marginalised communities. We are researching opportunities and constraints for local content created by and for specific local communities, for the development and communication of ideas, information and perspectives appropriate to those communities.