Introduction
Seven Digital Deadly Sins is an interactive documentary created through a collaboration between the National Film Board of Canada and the Guardian (full credits here). After interacting with the real-life stories shared by the people within the documentary, users are invited to condemn or absolve them for their online behaviours while indicating if you, yourself participate in this behaviour. After voting you are shown the statistics of how other people voted. The different behaviours are grouped into the original seven deadly sins; envy, pride, gluttony, wrath, lust, sloth and greed.
This digital text has been reviewed against 4 main criteria that identify and evaluate its digital features, intended audience and literary value. The criteria are based on the work of Yokota and Teale (2014) and McGeehan, et. al. (2018). For more information about the criteria, and why I have decided to use them, read my post, Evaluating Digital Literature.
Beyond Print
This is a professionally presented piece of digital literature which begins with a short video before you land on an interactive interface; the reader can opt for a more traditional list-style interface if they wish.
Regardless of choice, the links take you to a true-life story (text or video) or to single answer questionnaires that you can interact with. You also have the option to share the results of each questionnaire via social media. Going full screen to maximise the viewing real estate is a nice option and you can mute the background music, which I took advantage of after 5 minutes.
Value of Digital Features
The debate around the benefits and pitfalls of digital features within eBooks is well discussed (Flood, 2012; Hoffelder, 2011; Lamb 2011). However, there is significantly less research and discussion around the benefits of digital features within documentaries, as it is an emerging field or genre (Mikelli, 2020). Chalabi (2015) suggests that if the right digital features are combined within interactive documentaries, they can have a positive impact on retention, engagement and what users take away from the documentary but does not if the elements by themselves are insufficient. This suggests that the value of the digital features are, in part, reliant on the quality of the documentary itself, which will be discussed under literary value.
The navigation of the site was seamless and easy to master, despite it being a more unique interface. Having a combination of video and text-based stories worked well to provide a varied experience for the user. The opportunity to engage in questions and see how my responses compared to others took the interactivity to the next level, as I was leaving something of myself behind in the documentary itself.
It also made me consider the content being provided at a deeper level, as I wanted to be sure that my responses were an accurate representation of my thoughts. Interestingly, you can also share these results via Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus which is perhaps ironic, given that the documentary is wanting me to consider how I interact and behave online. Overall, I found the entire experience to be quite engaging and I stayed on the site longer than I would have if it had just been plain text or video.
Audience
Some of the content is more mature, discussing concepts such as sex and infidelity. There are no recommendations on audience within the website itself, even though all of the stories told are from adult experiences. I would consider it to be suitable for ages 14 and above.
Literary Value
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the idea that documentaries have literary value as a genre although it is an interesting idea, given that every documentary I have ever viewed was a video, not a book. My childhood experiences of documentaries filled me with wonder about the unknown and newly discovered (I am thinking of you, David Attenborough) and certainly engaged the family in discussions and in some cases, additional information searching. This was done using the family encyclopedia set, which as I write this, makes me consider whether the non-fiction text is a print version of a documentary. Fast forward to the world of interactive documentaries and I just spent an hour completely engaged with Seven Deadly Digital Sins. Goldsworthy (2020) discusses literary merit and who or what determines it in some length and suggests that the predominant thoughts of the day, personal opinion and prejudices all play a part. I have determined, based on my own experience and readings, that Seven Deadly Digital Sins has literary merit, for me personally and the broader community; I am more than happy for others to disagree.
Screenshot Attribution: All image copyright resides with the original creators, NFB Digital Studio.
References
Chalabi, J. (2015). To what extent can interactive documentaries affect the engagement of secondary school children? University of Skovde.
Curtis, J. (2022, August 12). Evaluating Digital Literature. The Rabbit Hole. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/therabbithole/2022/08/12/evaluating-digital-literature/
Flood, A. (2012, June 8). Enhanced ebooks are bad for children finds American study. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/07/enhanced-ebooks-bad-for-children
Hartmann, C. (2017, June 21). How to tell if a piece of fiction has literary merit. Cristina Hartmann. https://medium.com/@cmmhartmann/how-to-tell-if-a-piece-of-fiction-has-literary-merit-2a1413c5354f
Hoffelder, N. (2011, April 10). Enhanced ebooks are dead – Evan Schnittman was mostly right. The Digital Reader. https://the-digital-reader.com/2011/04/10/enhanced-ebooks-are-dead-evan-schnittman-was-half-right/
Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and Leading with Technology, 39(3), 12-17.
McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s good: Evaluating digital picture books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2017.1399488
Old Mate Media. (n.d.). 16 ways children’s ebooks are better than printed books. https://oldmatemedia.com/guides/ebooks-vs-printed-books/
Mikelli, D. (2020). Pedagogy of difference 2.0: Interactive documentary practices and participatory research with young people. Convergence, 27(2), 428-457. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1354856520934724
Smith, A. (Producer). (n.d.). Seven digital deadly sins. NFB Digital Studio. http://digital-deadly-sins.theguardian.com/#/Grid
Yokota, J., & Teale, H. (2014). Picture books and the digital world: Educators making informed choices. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577-585. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1262.