In the recent years, humanities and social sciences academic research has moved towards incorporating digital storytelling in the form of infographics to share research stories. One example of this is evident in Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Storytellers Competition, which was introduced in 2014 as a key way to spotlight Canadian research taking place in post-secondary institutions.

 

In this annual competition, digital storytelling is the focus, as applicants must submit an original work—video, audio, text or infographic—featuring research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which may not exceed three minutes in length (“The Storytellers”). The winning entries for the competition (the majority of which are infographics) are then broadcasted on SSHRC’s YouTube channel and shared across the social media accounts of post-secondary institutions.

 

In this way, it is evident that the humanities are incorporating digital storytelling in academic environments, as a way to share research with the public. SSHRC’s Storytellers competition shows that digital storytelling also proves to be an effective medium to share complex research issues related to the humanities and social sciences, such as topics such as psychology, sociology and linguistics. Thus, with SSHRC (a major Canadian federal researching-funding agency) promoting digital storytelling in a higher education academic environments, it is evident that the humanities is moving towards the digital sphere by adopting and promoting storytelling using digital mediums such as infographics.

View the SSHRC Storytellers YouTube page here