ABSTRACT
Implicit in the notion of reception are a stable preexisting notion of text, a linear process of communication, from sender/author to receiver/reader, and discrete moments of production and consumption. A multimodal perspective on reception challenges these distinctions particularly with respect to digital texts and makes visible the work of the active process of reception as remaking. This chapter discusses how digital technologies can affect the notion of text with respect to the multimodal character of digital texts, in particular the use of layering and hyperlinks. The linearity of the process of communication, in particular the idea that a fully formed intact message is “sent,” is examined and a more dynamic situated notion of meaning is proposed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the increasingly blurred distinction between production and consumption. Two illustrative examples are referred to in the chapter, in order to explore how new technologies re-mediate processes of reception, both involving students’ use of digital texts in UK secondary school classrooms.
