Multimedia news storytelling as digital literacies: An alternative paradigm for online journalism education
Abstract
This article analyzes a journalism student’s multimedia news storytelling project in the format of audio slideshows as required by an introductory course on online journalism. Combining classroom ethnography, semi-structured interviews, content and textual analysis, the study focuses in detail on how the student designs a character-driven, audio-visual story through the theoretical lens of digital literacies and multimodality. The findings reveal the complexity of multimodal and generic design made by the journalism student. It is also found that the design process helps her to assert an authorial stance as an emergent online journalist who negotiates heterogeneity of journalistic professional Discourses. This article proposes a genre-aware, semiotic-aware, critical framework informed by digital literacy studies and embeds a case study in the theoretical framework in order to understand the ‘literacies’ as required and performed in multimedia news storytelling. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are also discussed at the end of the article.
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Appendices
| Slide index | Time | Image | Description | Subtitle | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0:00:00 |  | The shoe-shiner in his working place | I can’t remember how long I have been a shoe-shiner. It must be over decades. | |
| 2 | 0:00:05 |  | The shoe-shiner is working | I didn’t learn from others. It’s all about experience. | |
| 3 | 0:00:12 |  | The shoe-shiner is fetching for shoe oil | You can’t be too stingy. | |
| 4 | 0:00:16 |  | A shoe under shining | Or the shoes would not look shiny. | Clinging sound of shoe shining tools |
| 5 | 0:00:21 |  | Shining shoes for Customer 1 | It takes me a very long time to polish shoes. | |
| 6 | 0:00:28 |  | Add oil to a shoe | I take it seriously. I want to make sure my customers are satisfied. | |
| 7 | 0:00:35 |  | Customer 1 | N/A | |
| 8 | 0:00:40 |  | A shined shoe of Customer 1 | N/A | |
| 9 | 0:00:45 |  | Customer 2 | I have been his customer for more than 10 years. | |
| 10 | 0:00:51 |  | A hand of the shoe-shiner | He is definitely an expert. | |
| 11 | 0:00:56 |  | Shining shoes for Customer 2 | I have never seen someone shines as well as him. Never. | |
| 12 | 0:01:01 |  | A side profile of the shoe-shiner | I worked in many different industries before. | |
| 13 | 0:01:05 |  | Counting money | I would take any jobs, as long as I could feed my children. | |
| 14 | 0:01:10 |  | Hands of the shoe-shiner | Life is hard. But it is good to be self-reliant. | |
| 15 | 0:01:15 |  | A shoe framework | No big deal. Just grit my teeth. | |
| 16 | 0:01:20 |  | Customer 3 | I really appreciate him. He shows the Hong Kong spirit. | |
| 17 | 0:01:25 |  | Shining shoes for Customer 3 | I know it is very tough for him, but he never gives up. | |
| 18 | 0:01:30 |  | A shined shoe of Customer 3 | We will be sad if this great shoe-shiner retires. | |
| 19 | 0:01:34 |  | Rolling up a sleeve | He always takes care of me. We are friends now! | |
| 20 | 0:01:39 |  | Iron bars next to the shoe-shiner | There are less and less shoe-shiners in Hong Kong. | |
| 21 | 0:01:43 |  | Shoe polishing with a focus on the shoe-shiner | Some Chinese people are old-fashioned. They look down on us. | |
| 22 | 0:01:47 |  | Shoe polishing with a focus on the shoe | No one wants to enter the industry. | Sound of wrapping a newspaper |
| 23 | 0:01:52 |  | Talking with a customer | N/A | |
| 24 | 0:01:56 |  | Two pairs of shoes | N/A | |
| 25 | 0:02:01 |  | A box of polishing oil | I will send them back to him after polishing. | |
| 26 | 0:02:07 |  | A customer filling water into the shoe-shiner’s cup | Customers here are very nice. They help me a lot. | Hissing sound of a plastic bag |
| 27 | 0:02:12 |  | Having lunch | Even provide food to me. I am grateful. | |
| 28 | 0:02:17 |  | Smiling while talking with his customer | Although I am poor, I’m happy to work here. | |
| 29 | 0:02:26 |  | People pass by the shiner’s working place | I am almost 80 years old and I will work until the end of my life. | |
| 30 | 0:02:32 |  | Overpass | But probably my craft is dying out. | Clinging sound of shoe shining tools |
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Biographies
Yang Song is currently an assistant professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, Fudan University. Her research interests include digital literacies, online journalism education, discourse analysis, and computer-assisted teaching and learning.
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Article first published online: May 13, 2016
Issue published: June 2018
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