Blog Post #7: Multimodality & Civic Engagement

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Location - The Starship: Literacy

Transmitter - Captain Antonis Ybarra

Message goes as follows:

The Starship: Literacy is still strongly feeling the effects of the Burnout Virus. In order to push our failing starship closer towards the nearest rest point, the remaining crew and I are working overtime. While there are a mountain of late assignments and future large, seemingly impossible tasks ahead of us, we on the ship are doing our best to tread water and survive until this is all over. The most recent of these tasks was blending the subject of civic engagement with the use of multimodality. For this round of multimodal composing, and in hopes that this one contains more modes of representation, I opted to create a playlist as well as 6 individual collages of some of the main characters.

The topic I had generally selected for this portion of blog posting was "subtle representation": representation in novels and stories where the main plot is driven by another central topic/theme, but subplots navigate characters with other unique personal identifiers. Of the books I selected for this portion, I wanted to hone in on a graphic novel called "Brownstone". The main plot of the story centers around a young girl, Almudena, as she struggles to explore her personal relation to her Latin culture. While the central plot focuses a lot on cultural representation, there are a few side characters that subtly represent other groups such as LGBTQ+ members and those with disabilities (Queralt and Tomaz respectively).

Below are the collage images and the playlist link:

Brownstone Playlist

Of the topics raised from the texts, the concept of participatory cultures kept ringing in my head. From the Jenkins text, it is described as "a culture of with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement" (Jenkins 3). In creating these collections, I found that I was able to analyze the different aspects raised in the first half in a unique way. Additionally, it allows students to "participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills" that current workforce and academic demands call for. As for the visual and audio practices used, I believe that it doesn't inherently excel our learning, but reframes it in a way that our minds can interpret in a different way. These are different cultural competencies that are used so often in our modern day that to apply them in an academic setting both prepares students for non-academic spaces but also give those students more familiar with non-academic expression a way to compete and not struggle as much with essays or other projects.

On the subject of fair use of multimedia resources and promotion of civic engagement, this format teaches a lot. When it comes to creative projects like this one, matters of copyright laws and the like are important for students to consider. It gives them a frame of mind of what can and cannot be used and how much, demonstrating what limits there are to this expression. For civic engagement, it is easy to preach and call to action in the form of an essay, but so much civic engagement and awareness is seen in other formats and mediums. In using multimodality, we are enabled not only to use different credible resources to prove our points and make our claims, but also demonstrate something similar and indentifiable to public eyes. It allows a bridge between what is academically demanded and what is socially understood.

Regardless of the fact that this is just another blog post that will push us a few clicks closer to this ship's possible salvation, I take pride in the work displayed here. Even if it is a drop in the pail of what is demanded of me and my crew.

Awaiting further demands and instruction

Signing off, Captain Antonis Ybarra

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