Digital Storytelling as a Tool for Effective Business Communication

Digital storytelling—the practice of crafting and sharing short, multimedia-rich narratives—has emerged as a powerful strategy for organisational communication, marketing, leadership, and knowledge transfer. This article explores digital storytelling as a tool for effective business communication by synthesising theoretical perspectives, reviewing empirical and conceptual literature, and proposing a qualitative research design for investigating how digital storytelling shapes message persuasiveness, organisational identity, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge retention. Theoretical frameworks draw on narrative theory, social constructionism, sensemaking, rhetorical theory, and media richness/affordance approaches. The qualitative methodology employs in-depth interviews, narrative and visual artefact analysis, and thematic analysis within a purposive sample of communicators and audiences across sectors. Practical implications and guidance for practitioners are provided, alongside considerations for ethics, trustworthiness, limitations, and directions for future research. The article concludes that digital storytelling—when designed with narrative coherence, authenticity, and affordance-sensitive media choices—can significantly enhance business communication outcomes such as engagement, persuasion, and organisational learning. Keywords: digital storytelling, business communication, narrative theory, qualitative methodology, organisational identity, media affordances