Synopsis
I’ve acquired numerous new skills and techniques within the realm of digital storytelling. My biggest takeaway from this story has been the use of social media and other multimedia forms to enhance my written storytelling. Overall, my skills and knowledge of how to use Adobe have grown immensely this semester. At first, I found it complicated to use; the more time I spent with the interface, the more comfortable I got. Creating my TikTok and video with Adobe taught me a lot about both the production and editing aspects of creating content. Looking back, I wish I had found a quieter spot to do some of my interviews because it was hard to hear some of the audio. Though the audio wasn't bad, I was proud of the angles and the lighting of a lot of the clips I got. I thought they were filmed well with good framing and lighting. Editing the videos also taught me a lot about how to recreate the atmosphere from being in the environment.
Developing the Story
Journalistic & Ethical Guidelines
An ethical guideline that I made sure to follow was ensuring all of my interviewees were comfortable with me filming the interviews. I usually only record audio when I interview. Going into the project, I was worried some might be uncomfortable with being on video. I prefaced all of my interviews by confirming that my interviewees would be comfortable being filmed. Everyone was completely accepting and helpful with being on camera. Another important ethical matter I wanted to be conscious of was researching and giving both sides of my story an equal chance, especially because I already had my own opinions on the topic of my story. I didn’t want to villainize people who shop fast fashion and instead wanted to understand why they do. To avoid this, I included data about why people shop where they do, to bring in both sides of the story. I feel I covered the facts in a way that still has an opinion but gives an equal chance to both sides of my story.
Challenges
The challenges that stood out to me the most throughout the process involved figuring out how to represent my data in an infographic. Graphics, design, and numbers have never come very naturally to me. Throughout my research process, I gathered a lot of data on the environmental impacts of the fashion industry, but not that much data on the second-hand industry, it was a little more difficult to find. I thought it was an important aspect of research to include in my final story. So I focused most of my infographic on data surrounding the second-hand market. One thing I’m not very happy with is the overall look of my infographic. I think it's not very aesthetically pleasing and a little hard to read. I tried to follow elements of design, like where the reader would look to make it understandable and easy to read, but it didn’t turn out the prettiest. Perhaps a different format or making the chart larger would have helped. Or even playing with the color scheme more, though I did learn a little bit more about design along the way. Another minor challenge was finding a quiet place to interview people during the swap shop. Inside the actual shop, there was music and people taking and shopping. I thought I had found a quiet corner tucked out of the way, but in most of the videos, the interviewees are hard to hear. In the future, investing in a small microphone for events like this might not be a bad idea.
Opportunities
The biggest opportunity I had while creating my story was all the amazing people I got to talk to at the swap shop and the event itself. The event provided so much material for my multimedia elements and written story. Everyone I talked to said interesting things that added a personal touch and experience to the story. The setup of the shop also provided an amazing place to get b-roll and talk to people who cared about sustainability in their clothing consumption.
Digital Media Experience
Digital Journalism
Overall, I’ve learned much more about data journalism and have a deeper understanding of all the work journalists have to do to make raw data readable and digestible. It has also broadened my ability to tell stories in different ways. Throughout my writing process, I wasn’t sure how to incorporate data into my story. There were numerous examples of different data journalism stories and various ways to represent data in class. All of the charts and maps, and different ways to represent numbers, gave me inspiration for my infographic that involved different kinds of numbers and statistics.
Data
Finding and synthesizing data was one of the more challenging aspects of putting my story together. I found it difficult to find data about sustainable shopping. I had done lots of research on the environmental harms of fast fashion, but I didn’t want my entire story to feel too doomsday-esque. I was able to find a few interesting surveys about consumer opinions, but I felt like it wasn't enough to make my infographic. If I could redo any part of my story and find more interesting data for it, my infographic would be the section. Overall, my use of data didn’t do much analysis; instead, I found statistics that I thought were important to telling my story and relayed them to the reader.
Enjoyable Moments from my Website & Story
The most enjoyable part of my story was visiting the swap shop. Part of my reason for doing this story is that I also love finding clothing second-hand, and Green Love put together such an amazing way to do that. I was able to shop through clothing and find items that spoke to me. I really enjoyed my time there and talking to everyone. They all had amazing advice and ways to find new clothing (to them) sustainably, and they were all so passionate about being able to have a unique sense of style while caring about the planet.
The most enjoyable part of making my website was publishing my story and social media. Watching it all come together and seeing that I got to create a space for it to live was really exciting. I wasn’t sure if my story and all the elements were that good until I saw it all together on my website. Then I realized I was pretty proud of the story and having a place to publish more work.