Initial Thought:

I thought this would be an easy task and I was so wrong! I had my mind set on a TV show but it was rather challenging to stick with the storyline as each episode of the show offers something unique. I questioned whether it would be feasible to put up pages of emojis without confusing my fellow classmates. So, instead, I picked a movie as at least to me, there is a clear and concise theme to perform the task.

Emoji Story in the Process:

-Start with the title
Similar to my writing, I like to have a title before I work on my first paragraph and the remaining section of the paper, I figured I should at least the title done first. For a movie, sometimes the title doesn’t depict the storyline and can often be something very irrelevant instead. Luckily for me, the movie title is simple and coincides with its storyline.

How do you say ___ in emoji? 
It has become something we do everyday to insert an emoji or two in our daily digital text communication and when we use emoji, it is mostly to express.. well, emotions. However, in this task, emoji isn’t just representing emotions but it also has to convey other meanings too. In my case, I had to rely on a combination of words and ideas to complete the assignment.

Sequence and spatial arrangement
Kress (2005) went into details on how the spatial arrangement can/is a way to give meanings (p.13) and I agree that the representation impacts how one assigns meaning to it. I did not use spatial arrangement in my emoji story but sequence played a huge role in how I present the story. The process of translating text to images and also images (TV show/movie) to images can be equally difficult.

Final Thoughts

Kress (2005) talked about the important role readers have when reading texts and that is, assigning meaning to words. This is when communication gets complicated. Everyone can interpret the same passage differently based on prior knowledge, current context, and cultural meaning. Generation difference can become quite salient when it comes to digital communication too, which is something evident in our reading last week.

Since more communication now moves digitally, one common concern people have is the lack of nonverbal cue in text communication. The result of it is people, whether they share the same culture value or not, are at the pitfall of misunderstand messages. Now if we could fill the gap by using gifs or memes, which often involve expression of emotions, does that mean we will be able to carry out digital text communication the same way as we conduct the same conversation in person?

Going off-topic here but this assignment also leads me to a deeper inspection of the old saying of “A picture is worth a thousand words” – is it really true when, arguably, the display and the text all represent something different? The example Kress gave on what image represents – a display while a story is – “a chronologically ordered sequence of action-like events, realized here as actional clauses” (p.14).  In some ways, are we comparing apples to bananas when we are putting to two together?

One more thing I want to touch upon is, the power dynamic exists between readers and authors. A quick summarization of what Kress wrote would be this:

Reader vs. Visitor

Knowledge vs. Information 

Last week when we talked about hypertext and how it challenges the conventional way of how one organizes and presenting work. I’m thinking how, for example, Wikipedia, has become a major source for anyone who wishes to look up information quickly. Anyone, and not just the experts in the field, can edit the information on the site. There is also no strict sequence on how one wishes to read the info presented there and one can simply jump to the section that catches their attention or suits the need.

Reference:
Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.