Multimodality Research Talk: Vlogging for Knowledge Sharing: An Ethnographic Case Study

Speaker: Dr Wing Yee Jenifer Ho, visiting from City University of Hong Kong.  

Video blogs, or vlogs in short, provide a way for content creators from all over the world to share knowledge and ideas creatively using a wide array of multimodal resources. In contrast to the 'traditional' means of knowledge production and dissemination which are highly-standardised and regulated in terms of content and design, vlogs allow sign-makers to create materials which enable the display of expertise and persona of the individual sign-makers in a bottom-up manner. The practice of vlogging brings about shifts in roles for the lay public to actively curate content which has the potential to reach a large audience, and thus it warrants more research on how vloggers communicate their expertise, as well as construct their online persona with a rich repertoire of multimodal resources at their disposal.

This work-in-progress talk reports on an on-going virtual ethnographic study which focuses on how one novice vlogger uses a range of multimodal resources to share knowledge of various topics with a global audience, communicating her expertise and constructing her online persona in the process. In this talk I draw on my field notes, as well as interview excerpts and online observations in order to make sense of how this vlogger makes creative use of multimodal resources to establish herself as a legitimate participant in the practice of pedagogical vlogging.

Drawing on the concept of 'sign-making from below' (see Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014; Adami, 2018), this research aims to shed light on how pedagogical vlogging, a kind of material creation 'from below', can influence teaching and learning practices which are increasingly dependent on digital technology. See the project description at: https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/projects/the-creation-of-english-teaching-materials-from-below-the-construction-of-expertise-and-selfexpression-of-pedagogical-vloggers(3c8afa8a-2b8b-49b5-9885-46571c2bef61).html

Bio

Wing Yee Jenifer Ho is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests lie in the area of social semiotic multimodality, translanguaging, and language learning 'in the wild' using mobile technologies.

This will probably be the last one before the summer, so drinks after the talk could be good to celebrate a year that has been very rich of events and talk about ideas on how to shape the activities of the satellite for next year.

Looking forward to seeing you all.