Love letters to strangers

Mind the gap between digital journalism and eletronic literature. In the digital age, how to write about the search for love? Using fiction or non fiction? The question is that a new epistolary literature is being written in cell phones, e-mails, apps and dating sites. How different is it in comparison with the old love letters people used to write to their soulmates? In a mix of netnography, journalism and digital storytelling, me and other 25 brazilian researchers infiltrated ourselves into this universe for the last five years. The idea was not to publish a tradicional print work for newspapers or a linear story. We created avatars, made hiperlinked articles describing each site or app we visited and also wrote field journals about our experience. It is an experience of multimedia storytelling whose original question, the search of a soulmate using the internet to extend our chances in the virtual world, work as a metaphor for the journalism chances to find unprecedented paths exploring new narrative strategies in digital media. It also highlingts a change in the reader's position, who doesn't want to wait anymore to watch the development of the stories by the authors and want to find his own path, make new relationships or join new social groups. And, with this, construct new stories.