A GENRE THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON DIGITAL ... - ETD

to the actual processes of composing with multiple modes, yielding productive insights into the
complexly layered, recursively structured, and variant contours towards multimodal meaning
making (Dalton & Smith, 2012; Smith, 2013).
Four Analytical Stances
In what follows, I draw on extant literature to examine different frames within which
digital storytelling has been captured and accounted for, with specific attention paid to the issue
of how discrete instances of digital storytelling is considered in relation to the collective cultural
practice. Building on the understanding of how digital storytelling has been conceived and
treated as an object of scholarly investigation, I explore areas that warrant further studies. In that
regard, I do not wish to provide detailed accounts of and comments on the strengths and
limitations of each study in my review. Instead, I work to construct and distinguish among four
analytical stances: multimodal semioticians, who study the new semiotics of digital, multimodal
texts; the cultural democrats, who are interested in the democratic potential of digital storytelling
in giving voice to the historically silenced social groups; the expressivists, who are interested in
the discursive work as affording engaging, authentic, and productive opportunities for socially
influential identity play; and the connective pedagogues, who work to integrate digital
storytelling into a connective pedagogy, which capitalizes on the multiplicity of literacies youth
experience in in- and after-school settings. In constructing these functional separations, I hope to
provide detailed accounts of the different analytical stances and frames employed by researchers
in studying the new digital phenomenon. However, I do not approach these stances/frames as
mutually exclusive categories. In effect, most research studies draw on more than one stance and
some approach digital storytelling from multiple frames.
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