ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way personal digital stories might be used in the formation of national and international policy. Digital storytelling practitioners' commitments to promoting authentic, relatively unmediated individual voice often exist in tension with the very evident processes of mediation, remediation, and recontextualisation involved in using life narratives in policymaking settings. The chapter draws on existing academic literature to further address two questions: whether policymakers are listening at all; and whether policymakers are only listening in and on their own terms. While it is not frequently foregrounded in existing literature, our conversations with international digital storytelling practitioners, advocates, policymakers, and researchers revealed that digital stories are being used successfully as just one part of larger advocacy campaigns. The chapter also considers the Ban Advocates initiative hosted by Handicap International as an example of how digital stories are being used as just one part of a broader strategic, international advocacy and media campaign to influence policymaking.
