Visual Communication · 2012 · 73 citations · 12 references
Social SciencesCommunicationVisualizationDiscourse AnalysisScience CommunicationScientific VisualizationAudience ReceptionMultimodal AnalysisMultimodal CommunicationMultimodal DiscourseMultimodal InteractionSemioticsEye Tracking IntegrationHistory Of Scientific KnowledgeMultimodal Communication AnalysisMultimodal Discourse StructureMultimodal Science CommunicationScenariosVisual Communication In ScienceVisualization In Science Communication
PowerPoint presentations, enabled by digitalization, represent a new multimodal genre of science communication that integrates visual, textual, and gestural elements. The study investigates how multimodal discourse constructs meaning from the recipient’s perspective. The authors reconstruct meaning‑making by combining eye‑tracking with other reception‑research methods in both real‑life and laboratory contexts.
Presentations with PowerPoint, made possible by digitalization, are another step towards more visualization in the history of science communication. This new genre of communicating scientific knowledge to an audience combines several semiotic sign systems and therefore can be analysed as a form of multimodal discourse that integrates pictures, text, design, etc. on the slides, as well as spoken language, gestures, acts of pointing, etc. by the speaker. This study approaches the problem of multimodal discourse – how meaning is constituted by the different modes – empirically from a recipient’s perspective. To reconstruct the meaning-making process, the authors apply eye tracking and other methods of reception research in real-life scenarios as well as in laboratory settings.
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