Scholarly Paradigm Shifts and Development Trends of Storytelling in Cultural Heritage: A Preliminary Study

Background: Storytelling has long been embedded into the cultural practice since the ages to make sensing and engagement with the world. For the last couple of decades digital storytelling has become more popular through the intervention of science and technology with humanistic structures for the preservation, conservation and inheritance of cultural heritage. This has led tremendous inquisitiveness across scholarly and service domain to bring innovation and best practice for sustaining both tangible and intangible cultural legacies throughout the generations.

Rationale and aims: In recent years, storytelling in cultural heritage have emerged as significant global research agendas, gained broad scholarly attention in both theoretical and practical aspects over the years. However a comprehensive analysis and visualization of this research area is still lacking to provide insights into the epistemology and status of the field. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the state-of-art of storytelling in CH; to gain insights into its global paradigm shift and development trends into scholarly domain.

Methodology: A mixed-method approach combining quantitative bibliometric and qualitative content analysis is adopted to achieve the objectives of this study. This study is limited into the intertwined aspect of cultural heritage, and thus excludes the singular aspects of culture and heritage. Data are collected from Lens database on August 5, 2023 using the search string TITLE-ABS-KEY: ("Storytelling" AND "Cultur*" AND "Heritage") and PUBYEAR: All. After screening, a total of 1253 papers were selected and analyzed using VOSviewer software (version 1.6.19) and MS Excel.

Results and Implication: The preliminary result shows that highest percentage of publications (13.6%) pertaining to application of storytelling in CH field is produced in the year of 2022. First ever publication was recorded on the above theme in the Journal 'Language Arts' in 1978. The University of the Aegean; Polytechnic University of Milan; National & Kapodistrian University of Athens; and University of Sarajevo, Polytechnic University of Turin are the institutions that produce highest volume of scholarly works in this field of study. During the time, highly productive countries are respectively: Italy; United States; United Kingdom; Greece; Australia, Canada, China and so on. Among the journals, Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage; M/C Journal; Storytelling, Self, Society; Heritage; Sustainability; and Interactive Storytelling stand top of the list in terms of documents and citation counts. Thematic analysis shows that the highest number of scholars are from the research interests including- storytelling; cultural heritage; digital storytelling; narrative; art; history; visual arts; literature; archaeology; aesthetics etc. To be more precise, 360-video storytelling; 3D technologies; book reading; home learning; immersion; multimedia narratives; parent-child conversations, virtual reality etc. are the predominant techniques & technologies on which the researchers published most within this field. The findings of this study have the potential of considerable theoretical and practical implications, leading to future research pathways for CH field. This work-in-progress study also brings about an indication to study storytelling from an individualistic perspective of culture and heritage.