Digital story retelling – Evaluation of a story-reading workshop promoting open-mindedness in the community

Digital storytelling (DST), broadly speaking, is a storytelling method that is interwoven with digital media. It is commonly used in educational settings or human services to support various sorts of social advocacy. While many of these DST practices have devised methods to engage marginalized groups to express their voices, they lack parallel initiatives to enable audiences to understand those voices. This study examined a story-retelling workshop model called StoryAd, which utilizes productions from DST activities to facilitate face-to-face contact. The workshop itself is also a lite version of DST activity. Method: A pilot study was conducted in Hong Kong in 2019. Participants enrolled online, met offline, and their advertisement ideas might go online and contribute back to the stories. The workshop model was evaluated using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The participants were 45 Hong Kong Chinese, aged 18-60. Results: Participants’ critical thinking disposition, self-esteem, perspective-taking, and curiosity toward new information increased, while their need for cognitive-closure decreased. Discussion and Conclusion: This study has proved the feasibility and acceptability of the workshop model. It also opens the discussion about extending DST pedagogy to engage and influence story-readers.