Interpretive methods & multimodal approaches to research

Käyttäytymistieteellinen tiedekunta
u digital storytelling
as a 21st century metaphor
Interpretive methods & multimodal
approaches to research, I
13.8.2018
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Marianna Vivitsou, PhD, post-doc researcher
CICERO Learning, Faculty of Educational Sciences

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Re-signifying with metaphors

Peirce’s semiotics: a triadic approach
sign
interpretant
object
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The sign of ’catness’
points to the object
’cat’. But what the
dynamic (final) object
is, depends on the
interpretant. It is the
interpretant’s
experiences and
purposes (e.g., studies
on the biology of
‘cat’ that attributes
meanings to the
object.

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Indexical
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Symbolic
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Media as performative texts (Chouliaraki 2008)
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Media as performative texts (Chouliaraki 2008)
u They enact paradigmatic forms of agency towards
suffering,
u which may or may not be followed up by media
publics.
u What this performative role of the texts points to is that
the media do not simply address a pre-existing
audience that awaits to engage in social action,
u but they have the power to constitute this audience
as a body of action in the process of narrating and
visualizing distant events.
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Media mediation for visibility & voice
u Media witnessing includes both visibility and voice:
u agents are both seen and heard in different
modalities of communication.
u Photographs, graphs, maps, personal stories in the
form of audio, audiovisual and textual testimonies
display lives lived elsewhere,
u Such display is never neutral – it is a product of
framing, of selection and salience.
u For instance, images are taken from a particular
perspective in ways that make audiences look at
the events from a certain position (Horsti 2016).
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Media framing of migrants: an example of
research (Horsti 2016)
u framing refers to a professional practice that is based on
largely unspoken routines and cultural frameworks.
u the analysis interrogates how undocumented migration
and migrants are framed in relation to the frames of victim
and threat, as discussed in existing research.
u attention paid to the affordances of modes and genres,
asking what kinds of resources they offer to particular
framings.
u Therefore, the study examines how the design of a
website, photographs, graphs, maps, journalistic genres
and language shape framings.
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storytelling & intertextuality
• In this space, every speaker’s utterance contains
the voice of others and, therefore, every utterance
is a resignification of other people’s words (Bakhtin
1986).
• We resignify to get by idealized cognitive models,
open up communication pathways and grow into
multi(lingual) subjects and happens in different
ways from the conventional use in everyday
conversations, in language play, disruptions of
myths, and resignifications found in students’ work
(Kramsch 2009).
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The imagined peer
As a young Finn argues, the
American peers are ‘completely
different guys’ who, being native
speakers of English, endorse their
own use of English through their
responses. The Finnish students
seem to look up to the Americans,
and trust that the person sitting
behind the screen at the other side
of the world is ‘real’ and hopefully
will understand and react to their
stories and comments.
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Who is the ‘real’ peer?
The ‘real’ is rather divorced from
cultural elements, such as ethnicity,
gender or even age. Although lacking
body and history, the imagined peer
is definitely a language speaker, is
polite and responds positively using
long utterances.
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Constructing identities with digital stories
As a young adolescent Greek
explains, the song they sing in the
story signifies the people’s positive
attitude to hardship, despite all odds.
The lyrics are in Greek, because it
feels better this way. Although there
could be some truth in this statement
in terms of, for instance, emotional
attachment, it is the popular narrative
that the scene of this story
regularizes.
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Digital storytelling & research
• the third space is where
boundaries get unsettled
and where it becomes
possible for users to
develop strategies and
communicative practices to
regularize and officialize
their contributions.
v J
v <3
v LoL
Emoticons for gesture,
body language etc.
(:multimodal analysis)
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Spreading the word
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Purpose?

Changing the script?
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How we construct our narratorial
and virtual selves as authors and
computer users matters
The objective reality of the
lab vs communicative
practice
Idealized view of the popular
culture
Popular networking practices
The digital can cross ritualized forms of
communication

Stories within stories make up an endless storytelling
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A contemporary definition of digital storytelling
u Signification
u interactive interpretative developmental experience
u narrative experience that is both the whole and its parts
u Professional action as initiative
u aiming for building identities
u Research aims for …
u in-depth understanding of processes and participants
u For a narrative understanding of the research focus as historical
reality and as empirical reality
u With digital literacy as part of a wider communicative competence
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Interpretive methods & multimodal approaches to research

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