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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”