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Amid Latin America's flourishing digital scene, there are two hot trends – multimedia and transmedia documentaries. Argentine documentary-maker Alvaro Liuzzi takes a look at the developing genre.

From hackathons and data journalism to brand journalism and the use of drones, the past few years have seen a lot of experimentation with digital technologies in Latin America. And within this scene, there is an emerging interest in digital storytelling which is shaking up the media sector and causing journalists like me to rethink the way we work.

Latin America lacks the public institutions which, in many other parts of the world, finance films and other narrative projects. Because resources are limited, Latin American storytellers (whether journalists or filmmakers) have been turning to the Internet in order to engage as diverse an audience as possible for the lowest possible cost.

While their embrace of the Internet may have arisen out of necessity, it's allowing creators to produce new forms of content and establish new relationships with their audiences. This, in turn, is giving a new dynamic to an old friend of journalism – the documentary.

Via The Digital Rocking Chair

Uri Mishol co-founded Games for Peace to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he realized one thing that the two societies have in common — their kids play video games. Thus, he and his team began to modify Minecraft — the mega-popular, multi-player, communication-based computer game — to suit multi-lingual Arab and Jewish players. One of their projects has 8th grade classes — one from an Arab school and one from a Jewish school — meet weekly in a virtual Minecraft game world. But the deal is sealed when the students meet face to face after six online encounters. It’s these real world meetings that reinforce the relationships formed online and ultimately create real change.

Documentary filmmakers have long-embraced this concept with community screenings and house parties, but this presentation led me to ponder how can we push it further. How can we plan for live elements that work alongside our storyworlds from the earliest development stages?

Via The Digital Rocking Chair, association concert urbain