AMT Lab @ CMU: With over 400 million people using Instagram’s story feature daily,[1] digital storytelling is becoming an integral part of how we connect to people and places. To facilitate digital cultural storytelling, MuseWeb Foundation developed Be Here Stories – an app that utilizes a mobile device’s geolocation and microphone tools to allow users to record stories about their favorite arts and culture sites.
3 comments:
I think this is a pretty cool idea, although it is clear from the pros and cons list Be Here Stories has a lot of work to do in simply programming to get it to a place more people will be able to and want to use it. I wonder who they believe their audience to be. It seems like the best in terms of content would be young adults and up; however, it’s mostly young adults and under who are so involved in social media. While these people might still have stories to share they might not have the type of content the Be Here Stories team was initially thinking of. There is one big feature of instagram and facebook and snapchat stories this app is missing that I think might delay its acceptance by social media users. One of the draws is seeing how many people have viewed your story; it’s the same dopamine hit as getting likes. With no way to see who’s seen what you’ve shared or even see if the thing you shared is on the app (besides the initial confirmation), Be Here Stories is going to have to rely on people wanting to share for community benefit, memory preservation, or extreme emotional/personal connection.
This is an interesting app that I may try in the coming days. However, one of the cons listed is the lack of ability to control what is heard, or respond directly. I can think of businesses that are also historical landmarks or otherwise significant to on this app having grumpy patrons or snubbed employees using this as a chance to leave negative “yelp” reviews and having no control over being able to respond to accusations that sometimes are overblown and incorrect. Also, if there are facts presented, there may be a lack of fact checking at historical areas. And I’m also worried about casual racism being inserted in some stories about places. However, story telling is important, and this could be a really amazing new way to explore cities and promote tourism. Local guides without having to worry about a local guide, it’s a unique and amazing concept.
This is an interesting way to promote storytelling and keep it alive and well. I am glad that the article talks about the pros and cons of using the app which allows us the opportunity to make a choice based on facts concerning the app. The pros listed concerning the app can be very beneficial to a company or a business but looking at the cons, there are a lot of things that bother me. One of the cons is that once something is uploaded it can't be edited or filtered, so it puts a lot more work on the user to make sure that everything that goes on the app is in good condition making use of another resource that may not be beneficial to using the app itself. Knowing that there is no way of filtering content, there might not be a way of deleting files/content that is not needed by the company. Another con that disturbs me is not knowing how long it takes for content to be available on the app making it not completely reliable for a company and the company's customers.
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