Encountering the World with I-Docs: Interactive Documentary as a Research Method

Interactive documentaries, or i-docs, are web based, multimedia documentaries that immerse audiences through dynamic, interactive platforms. This book unlocks the value of i-docs as a creative research method, providing an engaging guide on how to use i-docs to examine and communicate research subjects.

With examples, conceptual discussion, and practical advice, the book explores how i-docs can illuminate topics including temporalities, power and space, affect and feeling, freedom, and epistemic justice. The book addresses i-docs as a digital form but also shows that even just planning an i-doc on paper can open up new analytical perspectives.

Key features of the book include:

- An easy to use template for planning your own i-doc;

- Advice on how researchers can ’think with i-docs’ without even producing one;

- Discussion of methodological work with i-docs including participatory i-doc making;

Insights into a range of examples of commercial, activist and research i-docs from around the world.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars, students, community researchers, creatives and activists who want to enlist and ignite the possibilities of i-docs.

Ella Harris is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Story Society at Bath Spa University.