Book of Abstracts | AMiM 2019

Book of Abstracts Last updated: 10 April 2019

The full book of abstracts is available as a PDF and can be downloaded here.

Keynotes:

Tuomo Hiippala

Media and modes: key challenges in doing empirical research on multimodality

Multimodality research is an emerging field of study, which examines how humans combine multiple modes of expression when communicating and interacting with each other. Given its broad scope which ranges from embodied communication in face-to-face interaction to various external media such as printed documents, websites and film, multimodality research requires well-defined theoretical concepts for drawing out differences between communicative situations (Bateman et al. 2017). In this presentation, I focus on two key concepts in multimodality research – medium and mode – and how they can be applied to the analysis of communicative situations in external media. I argue that focusing on these two concepts is crucial for doing empirical research on multimodality in the media, regardless of whether the goal is to describe the multimodality of a communicative situation or multimodal discourse.

References:

Bateman, J.A., Wildfeuer, J. & Hiippala, T. (2017) Multimodality: Foundations, Research and Analysis – A Problem-oriented Introduction. De Gruyter: Berlin.

Carey Jewitt

Methodological dialogues across multimodality and sensory ethnography: Digital touch communication

There is a significant gap between technological advancements of digital touch communication devices and social science methodologies for understanding digital touch communication. This presentation makes a case for bringing the communicational focus of multimodality into dialogue with the experiential focus of sensory ethnography and the future-facing design-based method of Rapid prototyping to explore digital touch communication. To do this, we draw on debates within the literature, and reflect on our experiences in the IN-TOUCH project (www.in-touch-digital.com). While acknowledging the complexities of methodological dialogues across paradigm boundaries, we map and reflect on the methodological synergies and tensions involved in actively working across these three approaches, including the conceptualization, categorization and representation of touch. We conclude by honing in on aspects of research that have served as useful reflective route markers on our dialogic journey to illustrate how these tensions are productive for qualitative research on touch.

Workshops:

John Miers

Speaking my truth through the voices of others

As Researcher in the Archives in University of the Arts London’s Archives and Special Collections Centre at London College of Communication, I have been adopting the visual languages of other cartoonists in order to create semi-fictionalised autobiographical graphic narratives dealing with aspects of the diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis.

This workshop will draw on the processes I have used during the residency, aiming to introduce participants to methods of adopting varied graphic languages in their drawings, and applying these to personally-salient events and reflections. There will be two types of activity offered, which aim to be accessible to participants regardless of their level of confidence or experience with drawing.

In the first stage of the workshop, participants will be presented with sample pages from work held in the Les Coleman archive, and will be invited to restructure, embellish or deface them in order to create new narrative fragments.

In the second stage, I will demonstrate the methods of visual analysis I used in attempting to mimic the graphic languages of other cartoonists. Participants will be supported in then applying these methods to the sample material, and producing new autobiographical drawings.

Richard Misek

The Audiovisual Essay: a primer

Inspired by the rise of remix culture in the 2000s, the ‘audiovisual essay’ (or video essay) has over recent years developed into one of the most significant new tools for conducting film and media research. Video essays allow researchers to work directly with the audiovisual media that they study and to harness the combined critical power of word, image, and montage. They also provide an effective platform for disseminating the results of data visualisation and other emergent digital humanities methodologies. The audiovisual essay now regularly features in various online academic journals including Movie, NECSUS, and InTransition, and has become widely accepted both as a platform for research and as a research methodology in itself. Meanwhile, the vast public interest in video essays promises a level of impact otherwise unimaginable to the typical media scholar: Kogonada’s work, for example, has typically gained millions of views, and even specialised scholarly videos typically gain thousands of views.

However, creating audiovisual essays is not easy. This workshop aims to help participants take their first steps in conducting ‘videographic film and media studies’. It does so by providing an overview of the basic technical tools needed to create video essays, and of the various creative and scholarly approaches that currently exist to videographic film and media studies. Due to time constraints, the workshop will not involve any hands-on creation. However, participants can expect to come out of it with an enhanced understanding of both the practical and the conceptual tools required to conduct make audiovisual essays.

Sumin Zhao

Analysing social media photography: A social semiotic approach

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people who take selfies are narcissistic. In this workshop, we are going to problematise this myth by examining selfies using a social semiotic framework. This framework will allow us to analyse selfies from different angles, including:

Analysing the selfie as a semiotic artefact, i.e. the visual “structure” of the selfie;
Examining the interaction between (semiotic) technologies—smart phones, photo editing apps and social media platforms—and the selfie;
Exploring selfie discourses, i.e. how selfies are used in different contexts and social practices.

The workshop will focus mainly on the first two angles. Towards the end of the session, we will discuss how conceptual and analytical tools of the social semiotic framework can be applied in studying visual practices and social media discourses. It is a hands-on workshop, and we will be narcissistic and take some selfies. So, do bring your smartphones (or not so smart ones)!