Do-it-yourself interactive documentary (i-doc): a post-textual analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT The do-it-yourself (DIY) media culture on the internet is often attached to the power of ordinary users to produce, reproduce, and disseminate content in a decentralised communication platform. The same ethos of self-sufficiency facilitates the proliferation of new style and interactive documentaries designed by professional-amateurs and distributed mainly for the web. No longer the sole province of highly funded media experiments, the creation of interactive projects has been conceivable with the assistance of open source and off-the-shelf authoring software. The present case study investigates this trend by drawing on a post-textual analysis of the author’s independently produced and DIY interactive documentary (i-doc). Using a practitioner-researcher perspective, I explain the creative decisions involved in producing a political i-doc and interrogate how a website performs as a format of small-scale independent documentary project. I argue that the implication of DIY ethos on i-doc production is twofold: it reminds us to focus on functionality over beauty and prompts us to prioritise the story over interactivity. This article concludes on the potential of DIY ethos to fuel the production of citizen i-docs in the Global South.