| New technologies for digital video production such as user-friendly editing software and hand-held digital video cameras are making it possible for many people to produce and distribute their own video productions (short films, music videos, public service announcements, etc.). These technologies are changing and changed by the wide range of literacy practices that people use to participate in and make changes to society (Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Gee, Hull, and Lankshear, 1996; Lankshear, Gee, Knobel, and Searle, 1997; Lankshear and Knobel, 2003). The purpose of this dissertation is to utilize ethnographic methods of data collection in order to describe and analyze how adolescents are using digital video production as a literacy practice in school. Using New Literacy Studies, as a theoretical lens, and Grounded Theory as an analytic framework, the data in this study suggests that the power of digital video production resides in the ways in which students construct and use multimodal texts to communicate with an authentic audience in meaningful ways. When students are able to compose digital movies to reach audiences beyond school, they use multimodal literacy practices to make sense of problems in their lives, construct identities, and have fun with literacy. In this sense, digital video production is more than a technical, cognitive or communicative literacy practice but also one that holds powerful affective capacity for making sense of and effecting changes to peoples' lives. As such, the aim of this dissertation is to challenge reductionist approaches to literacy in school and argue for more opportunities for youth to engage with multimodal composition in classrooms in authentic ways. |
