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Mobile video literacy: negotiating the use of a new visual technology

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Abstract

In this article, we examine the practice of learning to produce video using a new visual technology. Drawing upon a design intervention at a science centre, where a group of teenagers tried a new prototype technology for live mobile video editing, we show how the participants struggle with both the content and the form of producing videos, i.e., what to display and how to do it in a comprehensible manner. We investigate the ways in which video literacy practices are negotiated as ongoing accomplishments and explore the communicative and material resources relied upon by participants as they create videos. Our results show that the technology is instrumental in this achievement and that as participants begin to master the prototype, they start to focus more on the narrative aspects of communicating the storyline of a science centre exhibit. The participants are explicitly concerned with such issues as how to create a comprehensible storyline for an assumed audience, what camera angles to use, how to cut and other aspects of the production of a video. We consider these observed activities to be candidate steps in an emerging mobile video literacy trajectory that involves developing a capacity to document and argue by means of this specific medium.

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Notes

  1. This is a term the participants themselves used, to describe the person who was interacting with the exhibits while being documented.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Alexandra Weilenmann & Roger Säljö

  2. Mobile Life Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Arvid Engström

Authors
  1. Alexandra Weilenmann
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  2. Roger Säljö
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  3. Arvid Engström
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandra Weilenmann.

Appendix: Transcription notations

Appendix: Transcription notations

Based on Jefferson’s transcript notation, as related in [1].

Well:

Emphasis is indicated by underlining

e:hhh::

Colon indicates prolonged segment

(0.3):

A pause, timed in tenths of a second

(.):

Pause shorter than one-tenth of a second

Overlap []:

Simultaneous (overlapping) speech

-:

Interrupted speech

hhh:

Outbreath

.hh:

Inbreath

>what<:

Spoken faster

°yes°:

‘Degree’ signs enclose quieter speech

YES:

Capitals are spoken louder than surrounding talk

wha-:

Interrupted, cut-off speech

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Weilenmann, A., Säljö, R. & Engström, A. Mobile video literacy: negotiating the use of a new visual technology. Pers Ubiquit Comput 18, 737–752 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-013-0703-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-013-0703-x

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