ABSTRACT

This collection explores the mediation of a wide range of processes, texts, and practices in contemporary digital environments through the lens of a multimodal theory of communication.

Bringing together contributions from renowned scholars in the field, the book builds on the notion that any form of digital communication inherently presents a rich combination of different semiotic modes and resources as a jumping-off point from which to critically reflect on digital mediation from three different perspectives. The first section looks at social and semiotic practices and the implications of their mediation on artistic production, cultural heritage, and commerce. The second part of the volume focuses on dynamics of awareness, cognition, and identity formation in participants to digitally-mediated communicative processes. The book’s final section considers the impact of mediation on shaping new and different types of textualities and genres in digital spaces.

The book will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers and students in multimodality, digital communication, social semiotics, and media studies.

part Section A|68 pages

The Digital Mediation of Practices

chapter 1|16 pages

Art as Research in Semiotic Technology

The Case of David Hockney's Digital Art
ByTheo van Leeuwen, Christian Mosbæk Johannessen

chapter 2|17 pages

What Happened to the Artist?

Representation and Positioning in Art Museum Websites
ByJennifer Blunden

chapter 3|16 pages

“A War to End All Wars”

Re-enacting and Re-embodying War Discourse. A Multimodal Analysis of Agency at WWI Galleries
ByMariavita Cambria

chapter 4|17 pages

Website Interactivity as Representations of Social Actions?

Developing a Social Semiotic Discourse Approach to Interaction Design
BySøren Vigild Poulsen

part Section B|66 pages

Awareness, Identities and Cognition in Digital Mediation

chapter 5|18 pages

Interrelation

Gaze and Multimodal Ensembles
ByJarret Geenen, Jesse Pirini

chapter 6|15 pages

“I'm So Confused!”

Social Reading Practices and Their Semiotic Affordances on Goodreads
BySusanne Reichl, Miriam Mayrhofer, Christina Schuster

chapter 8|16 pages

A Look Back at Early Economics Blogs

A Multimodal Analysis of Indexicality and Identity Construction
ByFranca Poppi

part Section C|80 pages

The Digital Mediation of Texts and Genres

chapter 9|17 pages

Multimodality and Genre Evolution

A Decade-by-Decade Approach to Online Video Genre Analysis
ByAnthony Baldry

chapter 10|20 pages

Video Abstracts

Methodological Reflections When Analyzing a Nascent Genre and its Associated Scientific Community
ByFrancesca Coccetta

chapter 11|17 pages

Healthy Pic Hashtagging in Twitter

The Role of Infographics in #AntibioticGuardian
ByAnna Franca Plastina

chapter 12|24 pages

Towards a Framework for Video-Mediated Cooper-Action

Discourse Practices, Bonding and Distance in Synchronous and Asynchronous Digital Video Spaces
ByMaria Grazia Sindoni, Ilaria Moschini