Retraction with face saving: Modelling conversational interaction through dynamic hypermedia

This paper describes RWFS (Retraction With Face Saving), a hypermedia application which models an interview between a lawyer and his client ‐ a lorry driver ‐ facing court charges of reckless driving. At one level RWFS takes the form of a sophisticated game in which different outcomes to the interview are possible according to the learner's degree of skill. At another level, RWFS is designed to encourage the language learner's awareness and understanding of the pragmatic features of conversation. RWFS runs on HyperContext, a hybrid hypertextlexpert system developed in Pavia by two of the authors, Marco Piastra and Roberto Bolognesi, and which supports dynamic hypermedia units. HyperContext's dynamic linking capacity plays a vital role in simulating significant conversational features such as the conditioning of a current move in the conversation by information acquired much earlier in the course of the interview. In this connection, the paper discusses the contribution of RMCI (Re‐usable Model of Conversational Interaction), a re‐usable application‐independent applied model of interaction on which the game is based, and which links a tactical level (the conversation) to a metalevel which provides a move‐by‐move commentary on interactional theory. In its turn, RMCFs metalevel is linked to a strategic level which interprets the structure of the conversation in terms of a pyramid‐like hierarchy of increasingly abstract theoretical concepts

Recent Methodological Opportunities in Online Hypermedia – a Case Study of Photojournalism in Singapore

This methodological paper reviews the recent work done by photojournalists in Singapore who have leveraged on the use of multimedia to create meaning-rich narratives of the social situations they investigate. Using an online multimedia project recently launched by journalists and photojournalists in Singapore, I will show how photographers'/photojournalists' expertise, knowledge and combination of text and photographs serve to exemplify the opportunities that hypermedia affords to sociologists, and argue that hypermedia presentations are particularly useful in extending auto/biographical narratives, encouraging collaborative research, as well as interrogating the everyday social lives of our informants.Visual Sociology, Hypermedia, Online Methods, Singapore, Photojournalism, Visual Methods, Photography

Knowledge Cartography for Controversies: The Iraq Debate

In analysing controversies and debates—which would include reviewing a literature in order to plan research, or assessing intelligence to formulate policy—there is no one worldview which can be mapped, for instance as a single, coherent concept map. The cartographic challenge is to show which facts are agreed and contested, and the different kinds of narrative links that use facts as evidence to define the nature of the problem, what to do about it, and why. We will use the debate around the invasion of Iraq to demonstrate the methodology of using a knowledge mapping tool to extract key ideas from source materials, in order to classify and connect them within and across a set of perspectives of interest to the analyst. We reflect on the value that this approach adds, and how it relates to other argument mapping approaches

The use of animated agents in e‐learning environments: an exploratory, interpretive case study

There is increasing interest in the use of animated agents in e‐learning environments. However, empirical investigations of their use in online education are limited. Our aim is to provide an empirically based framework for the development and evaluation of animated agents in e‐learning environments. Findings suggest a number of challenges, including the multiple dialogue models that animated agents will need to accommodate, the diverse range of roles that pedagogical animated agents can usefully support, the dichotomous relationship that emerges between these roles and that of the lecturer, and student perception of the degree of autonomy that can be afforded to animated agents

Here is the author! Hyperlinks as constitutive rules of hypertextual communication

In this paper, we examine the importance of hyperlinks in revealing the presence of the hypertext author and his decisive role in defining and controlling the dialogue with the user/reader through the hypertext. This is essential in order to adequately describe all the factors involved in hypertextual communication and how this communication takes place. In hypertexts and hypermedia, hyperlinks on the one hand define the possible directions of hypertextual communication and, on the other hand, their strategy of manifestation shapes the user's process of interpretation. Because of these two important ‘powers' hyperlinks have, and on the basis of John Searle's distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, hyperlinks can be defined as constitutive rules of hypertextual communication, set by the author, needing to be activated by the reader, and determining different utterances in the interaction happening during the navigation between the author and the user/reader. In the paper, after having described the semiotic-communicative structure of hyperlinks and the process of interpretation they require, the character of constitutive rules of hyperlinks will be illustrated by analyzing different dialogues generated by different hyperlinks in two particular kinds of hypermedial applications: hypertextual transpositions of classic literary texts and hyperfictio

Using Digital Tools to Foster Critical Inquiry

How do adolescents use digital media as tools in ways that go beyond simply extracting information or playing games to engaging in the literacy practices involved in critical inquiry activities?published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Toward a working theory of queer hypermedia: An analysis of queer textual structures in gone home and what remains of Edith Finch

In this project, I analyze two video games, Gone Home (Fullbright Company 2013) and What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow 2017), through a queer theoretical framework, focusing on three specific features of the games: 1) their status as open world games, 2) the agency given to players in interactions with objects, and 3) how ambiguous player-character identity is used to create a sense of estrangement in the player. I use these features to argue for a specifically queer theoretical approach to hypermedia, which is attentive to the process of how players create an identity for themselves within the game world. I also introduce the concept of the reader-player, a term that I believe (more accurately than reader or player alone) represents the cognitive/embodied approach that reader-players bring to hypermedia texts

Analyzing Digital Literacy Demands, Practices, and Discourses within a Library Computer Programming Club for Children

abstract: Among researchers, educators, and other stakeholders in literacy education, there has been a growing emphasis on developing literacy pedagogies that are more responsive to the ways young people experience literacy in their everyday lives, which often make use of digital media and other technologies for exchanging meaning. This dissertation project sought to explore the nature of these digital-age literacies in the context of children learning through and about new technologies. Conducting a year-long, multimethod observational study of an out-of-school library-based program designed to engage students in self-directed learning around the domain of computer programming, this project was framed around an analysis of digital-age literacies in design, discourse, and practice. To address each of these areas, the project developed a methodology grounded in interpretive, naturalistic, and participant-observation methodologies in collaboration with a local library Code Club in a metropolitan area of the Southwestern U.S between September 2016 and December 2017. Participants in the project included a total of 47 students aged 8-14, 3 librarians, and 3 parents. Data sources for the project included (1) artifactual data, such as the designed interfaces of the online platforms students regularly engaged with, (2) observational data such as protocol-based field notes taken during and after each Code Club meeting, and (3) interview data, collected during qualitative interviews with students, parents, and library facilitators outside the program. These data sources were analyzed through a multi-method interpretive framework, including the multimodal analysis of digital artifacts, qualitative coding, and discourse analysis. The findings of the project illustrate the multidimensional nature of digital-age literacy experiences as they are rendered “on the screen” at the content level, “behind the screen” at the procedural level, and “beyond the screen” at the contextual level. The project contributes to the literature on literacy education by taking an multi-method, interdisciplinary approach to expand analytical perspectives on digital media and literacy in a digital age, while also providing an empirical account of this approach in a community-embedded context of implementation.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 201