Digital storytelling in India: from theory to praxis

Abstract

Digital storytelling, as the name suggests, refers to the production and dissemination of stories across various digital platforms. The study builds on the existing scholarship on digital storytelling and defines its characteristic elements, which make it stand out in the plethora of current digital content. The objective is to closely study the digital storytelling landscape of India with case studies of major projects from 2010 to 2021, like Indian Memory Project, Daak, and Talking Myths Project, to name a few that retrieve and digitize stories of the country’s history and cultural heritage. The systematic literature review follows a bibliometric and content analysis of the existing research and projects to study the current praxis in India. The results reveal that though there is an active participation in digital storytelling in India, there is a lack of representation on a global scale, and hence the need to create our own digital cultural record through stories. The concluding arguments identify the gaps and draw upon the ‘banzome’ model of transmedia digital storytelling that suits the diverse nature of Indian storytelling, contributing to creating the country’s own unique cultural record. © The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EADH. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/pages/standard-publication-reuse-rights)