multimodality, identity and self- representation identity. ...” (ricoeur in time and narrative iii...
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Multimodality, identity and self-representation
Knut Lundby
MEVIT4130
Lecture 30 September 2008
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Circuit of Culture
’Identity’ (or rather ’identities’)can be thought of as stories,”social profiles”
(Champ 2007; du Gay et al 1997: 10)
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Identity, multimodality and self-representation on YouTube
Lasse Gjertsen - the HYPERACTIVE Norwegian
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Identity ‒ Mediatization
Johan Fornäs (1995) Cultural Theory and Late Modernty:
The ”growing media presence in identityconstruction which has been termedmediatization”
‒ not necessarily digital, but today usually so
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LiteratureDavid Gauntlett, Professor atUniv. of Westminster, London.Participates in MediatizedStories.The book is NOT about digitalstorytelling, and not DIGITAL,not even about the MEDIAIt’s about self-representations.How identities are constructed.Relevant to digital storytelling.New visual methods, sociology.Short version of findings in hisPeter Lang chapter.
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Serious LEGOTwo of the groups in his studyfrom the University of Oslo
‒ one group of media students
‒ one group of InterMedia staff
”Lego Serious Play”: Buildingidentities in metaphors
Metaphor ”draw on the basichuman cognitive capacity fornoticing similarities betweendisparate entities” (p. 142)
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The whole model as a metaphor
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Findings on identityGaunteltt chapter 10:
Finding 4: Recognition of ’identity’
Finding 5: Identity theories are common currency
The reflexive narrative of the self (Giddens 1991)
Finding 6: Identities are typically unified, not fragmented
Finding 7: Relationship between the individual and society
> People are carving out their individuality, within a social sphere
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Paul Ricoeur(1913‒2005)
on time, narrative andidentity (chapter 9)
”... the three stages ofmimesis”
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Ricoeur on what identity is”To state the identity of an individual ... is to answer the question,’Who did this?’ Who is the agent, the author. ...But what is the basis for the performance of this proper name? ...The answer has to be narrative. To answer the question ’Who?’ isto tell the story of a life. The story told tells us about the action ofthe ’who’. And the identity of this ’who’ must therefore be anarrative identity. ...”
(Ricoeur in Time and Narrative IIIsee Gauntlett p. 169)
Identity is shaped as a narrative
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Mediationbetween time and narrative
Mimesis1: Prefiguration (practical field)– life elements (structural, symbolic, temporal)
Mimesis2: Configuration (mediation)– creating the digital stories of faith
Mimesis3: Refiguration (reception)– reading, sharing the stories back into life
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Mimesis 1Prefiguration
Mimesis 2Configuration
(the digital storywith its plot)
Mimesis 3Refiguration
Raw materialfor the story:Concepts on– structure– symbols– time
Reading of the story:– weaving with own life story
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Versus media studies
Production
Media product
Reception
www.transformingaudiences.org.uk
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Finding 11:A role for media in thinking about identityGauntlett chapter 10:Stories in the popular media commonly engaged with.Such narratives give people the chance to think of a desirableidentity.Such stories are resources to draw upon when one constructone’s own narrative identity.Likely that people’s identity-storytelling include a sampling fromthe media stories in their social and cultural worlds.Individuals are unlikely to admit they base their narrative identityon a particular story from the media
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Analog & digital
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Key texts on multimodality
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse.The modes and media of contemporary communication.
Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age.
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Modes, logics and affordancesKress (2003):
The two modes of writing and image are each governed by distinctlogics, and have distinctly different affordances.
The new media make it easy to use a multiplicity of modes.
They change, thorugh their affordances, the potentials forrepresentational and communicational action by their users.
The single code of the digital technology (in music, image, graphics,words) offer the potential to realise meaning in any mode.
Multimodality is made easy, usual, ’natural’ by these technologies.
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Multimodality in Digital Storytelling
www.oaklanddusty.org
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”Lyfe-N-Rhyme” (DUSTY)22 > Department of Media and Communication
The careful multimodal analysisHull & Nelson (2005) Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality
“Randy’s story offers a strong counterclaim to the argumentthat digital media simply facilitate the multimodal composingthat could and does exist apart from computer technologies”.
Nelson & Hull (2008) Self-presentation through multimediaAccording to Bakhtin one cannot “speak” without orientingtoward an addresse. In digital stories one can say multiplethings, via multiple modes, to multiple addressees.
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digital storytelling in australia:from a(cmi) to (tallstoree)z
dr kelly mcwilliampostdoctoral research fellow
queensland university of technology
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www.acmi.net .au/ about
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www.tallstoreez.com
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Similarities: ACMI v. tallstoreez
adopt a workshop-based pedagogy;
produce personal f iilms/ digit al st ories in, by and large, realist -document ary st yle;
dist ribut e digit al st ories, for t he most part , among t he personal networks of t heir part icipant s, rat hert han professionally dist ribut e or publish t hem;
cent re around a communit y-act ivist et hos or et hic of giving people t he opport unit y t o t ell t heir ownst ory using previously unfamiliar media;
and f rame digit al st oryt elling as about developing skills for great er civic part icipat ion and/ ordeveloping individual creat ivit y.
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Differences: ACMI v. tallstoreez
exploratorymemorial
infinite - developmentalfinite - amateur
‘now’/future-orientedretrospective
video-basedphoto-based
self-circulatedexhibited, published, & self-circulatedText
mobilefixed
urban, regional, & remoteurban
school students (5-18)‘the public’ (diverse)Participant
companycultural institution
private sectorpublic sectorInstitution
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Conclusions: Digital storytelling is …
• a service that coaches (pre-citizen) youth in a larger, and ultimatelyunforeseeable, journey of lifelong development into digitized citizens
• a site-based and finite tutoring of citizen creativity as a form offacilitated cultural memory
for ACMI:
for tallstoreez productionz:
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’A discursively ordered domain’‒ multimodality in different organisational settings
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Dynamics of the digital
Power of the multimodality of digital mediaDigital stories makes the Producer a Reader
Back to Paul Ricoeur: Mimesis theoryThe “mediating role of emplotment”The ”power of configuration”
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Digital power of configuration
Changes the ”dynamic of emplotment”?– the “mediating role of emplotment”
New ”power of configuration”?– with the multimodality of digital media
– “prefigured time becomes refigured time throughthe mediation of a configured time”