Interactive Narratives

"Reframing Mexico" looks at the Mexico City beyond the violent headlines. The site features 12 short video documentaries and multiple interactive features. Topics include a single mother raising children in a large metro dump, a carpenter whose illegal immigration to the US ended when the American dream eluded him, a disabled father overcoming stigma and discrimination, and others. Interactive features include a border crossing game, a "build your own wrestler" feature, and more. This project is a collaboration between UNC Photojournalism and Monterrey Tec. More…

"Reframing Mexico" looks at the Mexico City beyond the violent headlines. The site features 12 short video documentaries and multiple interactive features. Topics include a single mother raising children in a large metro dump, a carpenter whose illegal immigration to the US ended when the American dream eluded him, a disabled father overcoming stigma and discrimination, and others. Interactive features include a border crossing game, a "build your own wrestler" feature, and more. This project is a collaboration between UNC Photojournalism and Monterrey Tec. More…

Chinese-Australian students have come under increasing scrutiny, raising debate about the role of culture, coaching colleges and notions of childhood in an increasingly competitive school environment. Are Chinese parents too pushy, their focus too narrow and the children too obedient? Or are there lessons to be learnt from Chinese students to ensure everyone shares in the success? More…

Goa Hippy Tribe is an interactive documentary that tells the story of the original Goan hippies, led by the inimitable Eight-Finger Eddie, who first met in the early 70s and re-connected on Facebook to re-unite in 2010. An immersive online trip, the project features interviews shot by director Darius Devas as well as material contributed by Facebook users as part of an initial, groundbreaking social media phase. More…

This project presents a collective portrait of workers who keep New York City running. Their stories unfold in a series of multimedia profiles produced by students at the Columbia Journalism School. More…

A collection of images that follows my journey into the past and asks questions of the future, while using pictures to create an awareness of exactly what the people of Camden, N.J., must face each day. More…

From warriors to "butterflies on wheels," Vietnamese women have inspired generations. More…

A group of singers from Tampa Bay traveled to Israel and the West Bank to perform a play about Martin Luther King Jr. The play, "Passages of Martin Luther King," explores the philosophy of non-violence that guided the American civil rights movement. The U.S. Department of State sponsored the play's performance in Jerusalem and on the West Bank as a cultural exchange with the Palestinian National Theater and Palestinian director Kamel Elbasha. The play was performed with Palestinian and American artists who performed 10 shows over three and a half weeks as a way to share King's message of non-violence and peaceful resistance. More…

The final flight of space shuttle Atlantis represents the end of NASA's shuttle program. In this special report, we compile shuttle program news, photos, facts and history. From the launch of Columbia in 1981, to the tragedy of Challenger in 1986, to the final flight of Atlantis in 2011, with videos, photo galleries, a shuttle trivia quiz and more. More…

“Viral Sockpuppets” is a character-driven crowd-sourced conversational story-making game, played within the YouTube community. Every time someone asks you a question it has the potential to change the direction of your own personal narrative, but two people can only develop a narrative for a short period of time before it eventually dies. Equipping a community of storytellers with the power to design and resolve conflicts on a public stage can not only guarantee a committed audience for his or her story, but will also produce a one-of-a-kind experience. The creation of a good story does not need to be linear, formulaic or built around a single plot. The “Viral Sockpuppets” is a virtual “story-world” populated by characters that create new organically developed stories through an “exquisite corpse”-like game. The protagonist asks the community to help resolve a dilemma by responding to the question with a “sub-plot” story suggestion. Players are then divided into categories: the active players who produce “sub-plots” and the passive players who vote on which sub-plot is selected for the narrative. Once an active player wins the public vote two times within the active narrative (it does not need to be consecutive), that player assumes the role of protagonist. At that time, the current dilemma is resolved and a new one is launched featuring the new protagonist. In this way, the “story-world” of the game never ends facilitating “sub-plots” and narrative chapters to continue the story forever. More…