Digital communication of the International Human Genome Editing Summit. Exploring the multimodal potential of conference presentations

Abstract

This study investigates the multimodal potential of conference presentations for specialized knowledge dissemination purposes during the International Summit on Human Gene Editing. The methodological framework combines a genre perspective with a social semiotic reading of multimodal artefacts, focusing on the main canvas of analysis represented by the video recording of a PowerPoint-based conference presentation, with the parallel corpus of slides and commissioned papers. The study pursues the aim to assess how different semiotic codes interact in the resulting multimodal artefact, and, specifically, how video recording of conference presentations contributes to the dissemination of scientific knowledge on human gene editing in slides and papers. The findings pinpoint the disappearance of elements typical of dissemination and popularization from the papers and the PowerPoint slides, and at the same time confirm that videos provide adaptive choices for integrating different modes for the fullest knowledge dissemination attempt, with some minor technical shortcomings.