Resisting and Redirecting: Agentive Practices Within an African American Parent–Child Dyad During Digital Storytelling

This article examines the digital storytelling practices between an African American mother and son. We used agency as a theoretical framework to explore how the two exercised their own power to collaborate on their digital story. As digital technologies became part of their practice, challenges and tensions arose when both participants attempted to override each other’s agency, as demonstrated in their interviews. Data were collected during digital storytelling workshops conducted at a university computer lab, church, and the participants’ home. Using thematic coding, we analyzed audio-recorded interviews to determine the participants’ agency in the context of their digital storytelling activity. We found how a mother and son worked together through resisting and redirecting when creating a digital story, and how their digital storytelling practices displayed evidence of agency. Implications include how familial interactions in digital storytelling practices contribute to the ways agency is conceptualized for families, educators, and researchers.