Several GENCI members participated in the 23rd International AELFE Conference, in Castellón (Universitat Jaume I). Check some of our contributions:
Recontextualising science: How visuals and hyperlinks facilitate understanding in The Conversation, by Sofía Albero and María José Luzón
Abstract
The Conversation is a science news website that bridges the gap between academic research and the general public by publishing articles written by researchers in collaboration with journalists, to ensure accessibility and engagement. The affordances of the digital medium facilitate reaching different audiences (Luzón and Pérez-Llantada, 2022), enabling authors to address the information needs of various types of readers within a single article. In this study we explored how visuals and hyperlinks are employed in The Conversation to facilitate the readers’ understanding of scientific content. We compiled a corpus of 50 articles in The Conversation (CAs) based on published research articles (source RAs) from the field of environmental sciences. Visuals were analysed in terms of their type, source, changes undergone when embedded in the CA, and relationship with the written text. Each hyperlink was coded in terms of the type of source to which it led, and analysed in terms of its function in the text. Despite the presence of various types of visuals (e.g. photographs, infographics, videos), the results show the prevalence of photographs that were not present in the source RA, potentially used with emotional and illustrative purposes, and usually extending the information presented through the verbal mode. The results also reveal that links in the corpus led to a variety of sources (e.g., RAs, governmental webpages, non-specialised sites), thus catering for users with different degrees of knowledge in the field. Hyperlinks provide new information that was not in the source RA but sometimes they also replace technical information originally included in the RA, making that information optional in the CA. The insights from this analysis can be useful to understand multimodal recontextualisation processes underlying the creation of CAs and can help future authors to disseminate science online.
Exploring the pedagogical potential of Medical Education Tweetorials: An analysis of interactivity and multimodality, by Marian Velilla and María José Luzón
Abstract
The Medical Education Tweetorial (MET) consists of a series of threaded tweets aimed at discussing medical topics and educating medical learners (Breu, 2020). METs remediate interactive lectures and case presentations into a Twitter format, leveraging the interactive and multimodal affordances of the platform to enhance engagement and learning (see Gero et al., 2021; Tardy, 2023). In this study we have analyzed a corpus of 50 METs, in order to explore how interactivity and multimodality are used by medical experts to achieve the pedagogical purpose of the genre. Multimodal and interactive elements were identified, and their functions within the threads were analyzed to understand how they contribute to the educational goals of METs. Some multimodal elements, such as emoji, GIFs or photographs, contribute to attracting and sustaining readers’ attention; others, such as photographs and graphical visuals, facilitate comprehension and recall through the visual representation of complex information. Interactive elements, such as reader references, questions, directives, and polls, encourage active participation. Links also facilitate learning by providing further context and information. By analyzing how these elements are employed in METs, the study demonstrates how METs function as effective digital learning resources. These findings highlight the potential of METs to complement traditional teaching methods by leveraging multimodality and interactivity to improve learning in medical education.
Videos, Images, and Posts: A Comparative Analysis of Hyperlinking and Embedding in Online Science Communication
Abstract
Digital genres have become a cornerstone of science dissemination, as researchers’ contemporary roles include making knowledge available to diversified audiences (Pérez-Llantada, 2021). Science dissemination authors, therefore, need to make the most of the affordances of the digital medium, namely hypertextuality, modularity, and interactivity (Jones & Hafner, 2012; Luzón & Albero-Posac, 2023). In particular, hyperlinks and embeddings are crucial in digital article writing since they allow readers to switch between navigation and reading modes (Askehave & Nielsen, 2005) but they are also differ significantly in whether they invite readers to leave or stay on the page. Thus, this study investigates the strategic deployment of multimedia content —specifically videos, images, and social media posts— by exploring the choices between hyperlinking and embedding within articles from The Conversation (TC), a prominent science dissemination outlet. Methodologically, the first step involved web-scraping to compile a corpus of TC articles, followed by rule-based automatic extraction of hyperlinked and embedded elements from the articles’ HTML. Data classification revealed that social media content like videos, images, and posts was present in both hyperlinked and embedded form but in different frequencies and distributions. The second step involved the randomized selection of a sample of articles containing these elements, followed by a classification of the social media content and an analysis of its rhetorical function as evidenced by surrounding text and the overall communicative purpose of the sections in which they were found. Preliminary findings suggest that social media content is more often integrated as embeddings for illustrative and engagement-driven purposes, often serving as concrete examples or inviting audience interaction. Conversely, hyperlinked content of the types analyzed is more frequently employed to provide supporting evidence, offer additional information, or lend credibility to claims made within the main text.
Abstract
In one of the updates of a Multimodal Literacies MOOC, a member of the community, Jin Shan Chen, stated that a way of demonstrating multimodal literacies pedagogy is engaging students with meaning-making across audio, oral, and written modes (https://cgscholar.com/community/community_profiles/multimodal-literacies-mooc/community_updates/202513), podcasts being then presented as an example of a curriculum resource for student engagement and comprehension. The general objective of this work-in-progress study is, therefore, to carry out a preliminary exploration of the multimodal literacies pedagogical possibilities of a corpus where the written mode is purposefully accompanied by an audio mode. That corpus is the series of Climate Science Briefing Papers (CSBPs) produced by the Science Engagement Committee (SEC) of The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) (https://www.rmets.org/briefing-papers), which consist of an independent home page that allows the visitor to click on a button and read the paper, a feature of the journal Weather (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14778696), but also to listen to a podcast episode in which the RMetS’ Science Engagement Manager speaks to the author of the paper. This double meaning-making structure not only shows a combination of modes, but also seems to constitute a “genre network” (for the concept see Pérez-Llantada & Luzón, 2023) created in response to RmetS’ goal of explaining important aspects of climate science “clearly and concisely”, apparently in an attempt at science popularization (Myers, 2003). The question is, though, how clarity and concision are exactly achieved in the briefing papers and their podcasts, and whether the discourse and register characteristics of the texts vary in such a way that ESP students can use these texts to learn to navigate the written and auditory language of the public communication of science in the path towards the development of multimodal literacies. Accordingly, this paper draws upon the notion of “genre network” as a cornerstone in the process of understanding how specialized knowledge is transformed, reproduced, and reinterpreted within specific forms of genre collectivity in the digital environment. As regards methodology, this paper is based on case study research as carried out in Chapter 4 of Pérez-Llantada & Luzón, 2023, especially “Case study 3”, which includes the analysis of features of discourse and register as prior to the interpretation of a genre network. More specifically, the present study aims to determine whether the social actors or “rhetors” of SEC’s digital environment adjust expert knowledge by drawing upon strategies of reformulation and paraphrasing (which and why, if they happen at all) in the process of making specialized contents accessible and relevant to broader audiences (see Bondi et al., 2015, on science popularization genres), and also whether briefing papers and podcasts ultimately constitute instances of recontextualization or even “re-entextualization” (for these concepts see Pérez-Llantada & Luzón, 2023, 6-7). In this study, the existence and incidence of reformulation and paraphrasing will be measured in terms of changes or differences in lexical density and grammatical intricacy (Halliday, 1990) between the texts (the Weather papers and their podcasts) with the help of computer software (WordSmith Tools and ATLAS.ti). Expected results would include a further decrease in lexical density (e.g., less nominalisation) in podcasts, but with a limited divergence from the written mode (the briefing paper) because of the heavily structured nature of the interviews in CSBPs podcasts, thus reducing the pedagogical possibilities of cross-exposure to meaning-making modes in science communication within one single digital environment.
Genre networks for public engagement with science: An analysis of knowledge transformation processes in an online crowdfunding proposal, by Ana Cristina Vivas-Peraza and Alberto A. Vela-Rodrigo
Abstract
In the current online landscape, scientists can draw on a myriad of digital genres to disseminate research, get international visibility, and encourage public participation in scientific issues. These digital genres, as Pérez- Llantada and Luzón (2023) argue, need to be conceptualised in conjunction with other genres with which they form complex assemblages or genre networks. A genre network representative of public engagement with science is the crowdfunding proposal (Mehlenbacher, 2019), used by scientists to prompt online donations for financing their research projects. On the platform Experiment.com, this network results at a glance from the embedding of several modular texts and multimodal elements (i.e., images and video) within a preestablished layout, plus their connection with other genres or related texts on the Web through hyperlinking (Myers, 2010). In view of these remarks, the present paper aims to examine the processes of remediation, embedding, hybridisation, and resemiotisation that give rise to this genre network, for which little research has been documented. To do this, we selected a research project on experimental Biology from Experiment.com as a case study. First, we analysed and critically assessed the rationale for the rhetorical organisation of both textual and multimodal genres in the network. Second, we observed how those genres support each other to recontextualise and adapt contents to Internet audiences. To fulfil both aims, we relied on seminal rhetorical and EAP genre studies (Miller, 2015, Swales, 2004) to specifically examine the rhetorical strategies scientists use to get funding. The results show that the network presents generic hybridity (Herring, 2013), since it adopts rhetorical conventions of traditional genres such as grant proposals and advertisements. Moreover, the video constitutes the most attention-grabbing genre of the network and uses a more accessible language than the text does to recontextualise specialised scientific discourse to all types of audiences.