1. Multimodal Analysis of Online Discourses General Online Research 2012
7 March 2012
Vivien Sommer
Chemnitz University of Technology, Institute for Media Research

2. What is an Online Discourse?
Identify online discourses as cross media practises of knowledge
Defining online discourses as communicative practices
Individual and collective agents
Hypertextuality
Multimodality
Animation and Interactivity
De-institutionalization
De-centralization
De-continuization (ubiquitous, infrequent, unstable publication)
Problematic searchability and achivability
Online discourses as well as discourses in general can be defined as regulating and regulated practices, which constitute the meaning of social reality.
However, online discourses are a special form of discourses
It is typical for online discourses that the specific acting of individuals and/or groups is observable. While actors in the classical mass media are less recognizable as individuals, they act on the web on the micro level in interpersonal processes of interaction and so they can have effects on the macro level through specific conditions of interaction, production, and reception
Another characteristic of online communication, which must be referred to in the analysis, is their increasing multimodality. In accordance with Kress/van Leeuwen ([1996] 2010, 2001), multimodality is understood to be the interplay of different signs or signs systems which through their interplay generate meaning. Discursive practices in general have to be described as multimodal sign acting. Through the digitalization of media visual signs can be designed, arranged, and represented easier and more freely. Thus the communicative relevance of images and other possibilities of visual expression (like diagrams, layout, typography) has grown (Meier 2008, 2010).
The peripheral practices of publications are a challenge especially for the research practices Because there is no institutionalized archiving for online-communication – contrary to the mass media – one is confronted with the problem of decentralism development of topics, which are less systematically and develop in segmented public. Furthermore, online discourses are subjected on the micro level to a personalized filtering. Thus, depending upon individual retrieval, only certain contents are offered by search engines.
Moreover, different feeds and certain browser settings as well as their uncoordinated dissemination by linking and through “copy and paste” practices lead to a personalized content

3. Methodical instrument for multimodal online discourse analysis
Grounded Theory: A qualitative research method that focuses on creating conceptual framework through building inductive analysis from the data. The analytic categories are directly grounded in the data.
Theoretical Sampling: data collection process on the basis of concepts
Coding: analysis tool to derive and develope concepts from data

4. Grounded Theory: continuous interplay of the data collection and analysis
Open Sampling
Open Coding
Axial Sampling
Axial Coding
Selective Sampling
Selective Coding

5. Grounded Theory: Coding paradigm
Consequences
Causal Conditions
Phenomena
Action and Interactional Strategies
Context
Intervening Conditions

6. Social Semiotic Analysis
Ideational function: function of constructing representations of the world
What is shown? (topics, events, objects, situations)
Interpersonal function: function of enacting communicative interactions
- What camera angle resp. what perspective has been chosen and what relationship is established between audience and scene?
- What perspective is established viz the objects and contexts shown?
Metafunctions
Coding
Today, I want to talk about the aspects of Multimodality.
As I have already mentioned, Multimodality descibes the combination of different semiotic modes
Mode:
Metafunctions
From a theoretical point of view, the social semiotic concept of multimodality is based on Michael Halliday’s assumption that the construction of meaning is not only realised through language, but involves many semiotic systems. Cultural meanings are realized, he argued, through a great variety of symbolic modes, like language, pictures, fashion, music, and art.
Following his argumentation, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen pointed out that the three social semiotic ‘metafunctions’, that is, the ideational function, the interpersonal function, and the textual function, are simultaneously present in every act of social communication.
Thus, Kress and van Leeuwen define a mode of communication as “multifunctional in its uses in the culturally located making of signs”.
Multimodality then, and here we again borrow from van Leeuwen, is the “combination of different semiotic modes – for example, language and music – in a communicative artefact or event”.
For example, a picture can visualise the details of a phenomenon in a certain situation. Language can explain changes and developments of this phenomenon but it can’t describe the detailed constitution of it like a visual representation could do.

7. e Social Semiotic Analysis
Textual function: function of marshalling communicative acts to larger wholes
- How is attention organized? (highlights, accentuation, contrast, organization of grounds)
Metafunctions
Coding

8. Social Semiotic Analysis
Axial Coding
Multimodal Communication Model
Selective Coding
Discourse
Design
Production
Distribution

9. Case Study Discourse on John Demjanjuk and Holocaust related war crimes
As a member of the Red Army during World War II, he was captured under the name of Iwan Demjanjuk, and was held prisoner by the German army. He was trained as a so-called “Trawniki”. These were mostly non-German prisoners trained in the SS camp “Trawniki” to be the helpers of the SS. In this function Demjanjuk is supposed to have served as a guard at the extermination camp Sobibor. After the war he emigrated to the USA and changed his first name to John Demjanjuk. In 2009 the Munich public prosecutor's office pressed charges against him, whereupon he was deported from the USA to Germany. He has been on trial since November On May 12th, 2011 Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison.
The trial against this former concentration camp guard has caused an intensive discussion on the World Wide Web.

10. Case Study - Data

11. Case Study - Data

12. Case Study – Open Coding
Prisoner of war
Voluntariness
Options for actions
Motive
Trawniki
Crimes
Evidence
Nazi war criminal
Sobibor

13. Vsem_SOBIBOR_Situation V_Sobibor Sobibor Interpersonal function
Ideational function
Vsem_SOBIBOR_Object
Vsem_SOBIBOR_Situation
V_Sobibor
Sobibor
Interpersonal function
A_Sobibor
Vsem_SOBIBOR_Image section
Vsem_SOBIBOR_ Camera angle
S_Sobibor
Textual function
Vsem_SOBIBOR_ Enhancement
V_ Codes for visual communication
A_ Codes for audio communication
S_ Codes for written communication
Vsem_semiotic Codes
Vsem_SOBIBOR_Distance

14. Nazi war criminal and his punishment
Case Study – Axial Coding
Consequences:
Nazi war criminal and his punishment
Discursive phenomenon:
Trawniki are guilty/ are not guilty
Causal Conditions:
- war captivity
- SS-Identity Card as an evidence
Intervening Conditions:
- no definitely historical position
Design: - no visual material of Sobibor, little visual historical material of Demjanjuk as a Trawniki
Context:
- Comparison with other Nazi war criminals
- Visual Illustration of Trawnikis
Action and Interactional Strategies:
highlight options for actions
- Question correlation of voluntariness and war captivity
Production/Distribution:
- Using visual material of other camps, other war criminals

15. Thank You!
Vivien Sommer

16. References Corbin, J. ; Strauss, A. L
References Corbin, J..; Strauss, A. L. ([1990] 2008): Basics of qualitative research. Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. 3. ed. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage Publ. Glaser, B. G.; Strauss, A. L. ([1967] 2008): The discovery of grounded theory. Strategies for qualitative research. 3. paperback printing. New Brunswick: Aldine. Halliday, M. (2004): An Introduction to functional Grammar. Third Edition. London, New York: Arnold. Kress, G.; van Leeuwen, T. ([1996 ] 2010): Reading images. The grammar of visual design. Reprinted. 2. ed. London: Routledge. Kress, Gunther; van Leeuwen, T. (2001): Multimodal discourse. The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Hodder Education.