Using digital storytelling to facilitate critical thinking disposition in youth civic engagement: A randomized control trial

Digital Storytelling (DST) is a storytelling practice that is interwoven with digital media, including images, texts, sounds, and other elements. This study specifically designed a DST project based on a dialogic orientation and examined to what extent it could promote young participants’ critical and reflective mindsets. By using civic identity as a heuristic production theme, a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) was conducted in Hong Kong in 2019. Participants were youths in Hong Kong, aged 16–24. They were randomized into a group receiving intervention (n1 = 36) and a control group that did not receive the intervention (n2 = 51). Participants shared photos on social media, chatted online and offline with facilitators, and finally produced their digital photo stories. Participants in the intervention group increased their self-esteem and critical thinking disposition. Their ethnocentric views also declined. Participants in the control group became more closed-minded, but participants in the intervention group remained at a stable level. This study provides initial evidence showing that DST might be used to develop youth participants’ CT disposition in civic engagement activities.