Analyzing Multimodal Data

Anne Frances Wysocki, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

What to do when your data won’t hold still because it’s moving on a screen before you—or because it crosses several media?

Participants will leave this workshop having learned, applied, and critiqued an ordered set of questions that will help to develop analyses of mixed media and transmedia objects/texts. These questions, based in rhetorical and cultural understandings of media functioning, can be applied to videos, games (including ARGs), websites, and other mixed media objects/texts. The questions help researchers comprehend how differing media—when intentionally brought together to create a defined experience for audiences—play off each other’s affordances in the construction of overall effects.

The workshop will have three parts:

• An initial presentation, demonstration, and discussion of the questions,
• time for practice with the questions followed by discussion of their assumptions, results, and limitations
• discussion of how to move from initial analysis of multimodal and/or transmedia data to developing an argument for presentation or publication.

In preparation for the workshop, participants will be asked to read several short readings that will be sent prior to the workshop.  Workshops participants are encouraged to bring multimodal texts relevant to their own research, but sample texts will also be provided.

You can find the complete call for participation in the ATTW 2013 Research Methods Workshops at:

Workshop Call: Available at this link

Application form: Download the PDF and submit to Cheryl Geisler at cheryl_geisler@sfu.ca