Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231161803
Nina Nørgaard, Carole Jepsen
With sexually transmitted infections (STIs) on the rise, recent reports have revealed ignorance and inequality in matters of sexual health among young people in Denmark. In this article, the authors use a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach to examine the use and functions of visual resources in Danish sexual health communication. They focus on the role visuals play in communicating content and framing certain reader identities, which may indicate possible connections between the nature of the available information and the findings of the reports. In the material that is available, they find that the visual information is inconsistent and unclear in relation to representations of different contraceptives and their use. Moreover, they find a tendency to foreground normative assumptions with representations of heterosexuality and gender inequality persisting in the contraception information and the responsibility for contraception predominantly falling to the woman.
{"title":"Misconceptions: a multimodal study of Danish contraception information","authors":"Nina Nørgaard, Carole Jepsen","doi":"10.1177/14703572231161803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231161803","url":null,"abstract":"With sexually transmitted infections (STIs) on the rise, recent reports have revealed ignorance and inequality in matters of sexual health among young people in Denmark. In this article, the authors use a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach to examine the use and functions of visual resources in Danish sexual health communication. They focus on the role visuals play in communicating content and framing certain reader identities, which may indicate possible connections between the nature of the available information and the findings of the reports. In the material that is available, they find that the visual information is inconsistent and unclear in relation to representations of different contraceptives and their use. Moreover, they find a tendency to foreground normative assumptions with representations of heterosexuality and gender inequality persisting in the contraception information and the responsibility for contraception predominantly falling to the woman.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"2014 1","pages":"488 - 509"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82713306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231168934
Deborah Bateson
PREVIOUS ARTICLERepresenting cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health
在中国政府的社交媒体健康活动中介绍宫颈癌:道德化和抽象化女性性健康
{"title":"Afterword","authors":"Deborah Bateson","doi":"10.1177/14703572231168934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231168934","url":null,"abstract":"PREVIOUS ARTICLERepresenting cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135701377","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231169877
V. Heberle, Veronica CoitinhoFormer website of Ministry of Women, Famil Constanty
Although institutional websites focusing on health matters play an important role in providing information in contemporary society, analysis of the way they use visual communication has received scarce academic attention. This exploratory study seeks to address this neglect through a visual analysis of public institutional websites concerned with the prevention of teenage pregnancy, which, in Brazil, is a serious sociocultural predicament. Drawing on a social semiotic approach to communication, specifically using systemic-functional grammar, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design (Reading Images, 2021[2006]) and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework of visual social actors, the authors analyse the visual and verbal features used to portray the social actors in images from the selected websites. Results show that pregnant teenagers tend to be visually portrayed in isolation, suggesting a sense of powerlessness. Other relevant social actors such as parents and/or family members, fathers of the babies, medical and educational professionals are usually not represented. In addition, pregnant teenagers are portrayed generically, categorizing them, rather than portraying them as individuals. Teenagers who apparently abstain from sexuality, on the other hand, are shown in naturalistic images, smiling at the viewer and in happy closely-knit groups of friends. The texts also foreground the institutions providing the information, through logos and through typography.
{"title":"A social semiotic study of public institutional websites focusing on teenage pregnancy in Brazil","authors":"V. Heberle, Veronica CoitinhoFormer website of Ministry of Women, Famil Constanty","doi":"10.1177/14703572231169877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231169877","url":null,"abstract":"Although institutional websites focusing on health matters play an important role in providing information in contemporary society, analysis of the way they use visual communication has received scarce academic attention. This exploratory study seeks to address this neglect through a visual analysis of public institutional websites concerned with the prevention of teenage pregnancy, which, in Brazil, is a serious sociocultural predicament. Drawing on a social semiotic approach to communication, specifically using systemic-functional grammar, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design (Reading Images, 2021[2006]) and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework of visual social actors, the authors analyse the visual and verbal features used to portray the social actors in images from the selected websites. Results show that pregnant teenagers tend to be visually portrayed in isolation, suggesting a sense of powerlessness. Other relevant social actors such as parents and/or family members, fathers of the babies, medical and educational professionals are usually not represented. In addition, pregnant teenagers are portrayed generically, categorizing them, rather than portraying them as individuals. Teenagers who apparently abstain from sexuality, on the other hand, are shown in naturalistic images, smiling at the viewer and in happy closely-knit groups of friends. The texts also foreground the institutions providing the information, through logos and through typography.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":"553 - 574"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87071324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231167528
Oluwabunmi O. Oyebode
This study analyses the use of multimodal semiotic resources in the Family Planning campaign materials of the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative’s (NURHI) ‘Get It Together’ (GIT) campaign which aims to persuade individuals and families, families to adopt family planning and thus significantly reduce the country’s high fertility and maternal mortality rate. Using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar in Reading Images and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor framework in Discourse and Practice, combined with research in the Nigerian social and cultural context, the study finds that the campaign uses both visual and verbal means to create awareness of contraceptive methods and to counter misconceptions about them. The author also finds that the campaign primarily addresses married couples and includes people from different ethnoreligious backgrounds, but excludes young people, subtly affirming ‘sexual abstinence’ before marriage. Furthermore, the campaign uses a range of strategies for persuading Nigerians to adopt family planning, including linking the adoption of family planning to the benefits of a modern urban lifestyle, engaging religious and community leaders as supporters of the campaign and countering patriarchal traditions by promoting the participation of men in family planning.
{"title":"Multimodal resources in the ‘Get It Together’ reproductive health campaign in Nigeria","authors":"Oluwabunmi O. Oyebode","doi":"10.1177/14703572231167528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231167528","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyses the use of multimodal semiotic resources in the Family Planning campaign materials of the Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative’s (NURHI) ‘Get It Together’ (GIT) campaign which aims to persuade individuals and families, families to adopt family planning and thus significantly reduce the country’s high fertility and maternal mortality rate. Using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar in Reading Images and Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor framework in Discourse and Practice, combined with research in the Nigerian social and cultural context, the study finds that the campaign uses both visual and verbal means to create awareness of contraceptive methods and to counter misconceptions about them. The author also finds that the campaign primarily addresses married couples and includes people from different ethnoreligious backgrounds, but excludes young people, subtly affirming ‘sexual abstinence’ before marriage. Furthermore, the campaign uses a range of strategies for persuading Nigerians to adopt family planning, including linking the adoption of family planning to the benefits of a modern urban lifestyle, engaging religious and community leaders as supporters of the campaign and countering patriarchal traditions by promoting the participation of men in family planning.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"11 1","pages":"510 - 532"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89498551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231161804
Theo van Leeuwen, Nikolina Zonjic
This article investigates the use of visual communication in sexual and reproductive health information resources produced by an Australian Family Planning organization for different populations – people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (especially recent immigrants from Syria and Afghanistan), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and young people from both these groups. Co-authored by a semiotician and the manager of the organization’s Health Promotion Team, it combines visual analysis of semiotic products with firsthand experience of the organization’s semiotic practices. The article shows how the same medical information leads to different health information products for different groups on the basis of ideas about what can be considered culturally acceptable to these groups. In this way, it demonstrates a social semiotic approach to the analysis of visual communication in which the findings of analysing visual products are understood in relation to the practices of their production.
{"title":"Practice and product: a social semiotic approach to visual communication in sexual and reproductive health promotion","authors":"Theo van Leeuwen, Nikolina Zonjic","doi":"10.1177/14703572231161804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231161804","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the use of visual communication in sexual and reproductive health information resources produced by an Australian Family Planning organization for different populations – people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (especially recent immigrants from Syria and Afghanistan), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and young people from both these groups. Co-authored by a semiotician and the manager of the organization’s Health Promotion Team, it combines visual analysis of semiotic products with firsthand experience of the organization’s semiotic practices. The article shows how the same medical information leads to different health information products for different groups on the basis of ideas about what can be considered culturally acceptable to these groups. In this way, it demonstrates a social semiotic approach to the analysis of visual communication in which the findings of analysing visual products are understood in relation to the practices of their production.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":"429 - 448"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84930290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231170481
Nina Nørgaard, Theo van Leeuwen, Carole Jepsen
health communication, multimodal discourses of sustainability and the environment, typography and the semiotics of architecture
健康传播,可持续发展和环境的多模式话语,排版和建筑的符号学
{"title":"Visual design for sexual and reproductive health promotion: a global perspective","authors":"Nina Nørgaard, Theo van Leeuwen, Carole Jepsen","doi":"10.1177/14703572231170481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231170481","url":null,"abstract":"health communication, multimodal discourses of sustainability and the environment, typography and the semiotics of architecture","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"22 1","pages":"421 - 428"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89310263","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231166906
Maryam Ghiasian
This study investigates the visual representation of menopause in Iranian health promotion resources. The author uses Kress and Van Leeuwen’s approach to visual analysis (Kress G and Van Leeuwen T (2002) Colour as a semiotic mode: Notes for a grammar of colour. Visual Communication 2(3): 343–368 and Kress G and Van Leeuwen T (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.) to study publications about the menopause by the Iranian Government and two major medical universities. Two research questions guide the investigation: How do Iranian health promotion resources visually represent the menopause? How do these representations reflect and reproduce cultural values and religious beliefs? Findings reveal that: the publications address both men and women, but exclude widows, single and divorced women; the publications encourage women to stay healthy and lead a fulfilling post-menopausal life; and that they have a distinctly Iranian approach to the use of visual communication, characterized by abstract modality, visual symbolism and the emotive expressivity of a vivid use of colour. However, the publications have not been updated since 2008 and are currently not distributed so that their generally positive message cannot, at present, challenge some traditional masculine beliefs which restrict women to the roles of wife and mother.
{"title":"Visual representation of the menopause in Iran","authors":"Maryam Ghiasian","doi":"10.1177/14703572231166906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231166906","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates the visual representation of menopause in Iranian health promotion resources. The author uses Kress and Van Leeuwen’s approach to visual analysis (Kress G and Van Leeuwen T (2002) Colour as a semiotic mode: Notes for a grammar of colour. Visual Communication 2(3): 343–368 and Kress G and Van Leeuwen T (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.) to study publications about the menopause by the Iranian Government and two major medical universities. Two research questions guide the investigation: How do Iranian health promotion resources visually represent the menopause? How do these representations reflect and reproduce cultural values and religious beliefs? Findings reveal that: the publications address both men and women, but exclude widows, single and divorced women; the publications encourage women to stay healthy and lead a fulfilling post-menopausal life; and that they have a distinctly Iranian approach to the use of visual communication, characterized by abstract modality, visual symbolism and the emotive expressivity of a vivid use of colour. However, the publications have not been updated since 2008 and are currently not distributed so that their generally positive message cannot, at present, challenge some traditional masculine beliefs which restrict women to the roles of wife and mother.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"68 1","pages":"533 - 552"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74948735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1177/14703572231170343
Wenting Zhao, Gwen Bouvier
This article analyses an award-winning film produced as part of the Chinese government’s ‘Healthy China Initiative’ to increase awareness of cervical cancer among young women. The film was designed to be social media friendly, using a more accessible popular style, and it achieved over 350 million views on Chinese social media. The aim had been to shift away from a tradition of more formal, authoritative public information content. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis in the broader tradition of critical health communication studies, the findings support other critics of Chinese public health information in relation to women’s reproductive health. Despite the accessible style, the authors find a highly conservative ideology of womanhood, where the actual nature of cervical cancer, caused by the very common Human Papillomavirus, is obscured in a highly moralized message about sexual abstinence. The film also represents a view of Chinese health services that glosses the difficulty of access for many, as well as public concerns about corruption and clientelism.
{"title":"Representing cervical cancer in a government social media health campaign in China: moralizing and abstracting women’s sexual health","authors":"Wenting Zhao, Gwen Bouvier","doi":"10.1177/14703572231170343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231170343","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses an award-winning film produced as part of the Chinese government’s ‘Healthy China Initiative’ to increase awareness of cervical cancer among young women. The film was designed to be social media friendly, using a more accessible popular style, and it achieved over 350 million views on Chinese social media. The aim had been to shift away from a tradition of more formal, authoritative public information content. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis in the broader tradition of critical health communication studies, the findings support other critics of Chinese public health information in relation to women’s reproductive health. Despite the accessible style, the authors find a highly conservative ideology of womanhood, where the actual nature of cervical cancer, caused by the very common Human Papillomavirus, is obscured in a highly moralized message about sexual abstinence. The film also represents a view of Chinese health services that glosses the difficulty of access for many, as well as public concerns about corruption and clientelism.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"90 1","pages":"469 - 487"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73381568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-24DOI: 10.1177/14703572231180215
Dennis Lindenberg
Student presentations conducted with the help of PowerPoint represent communicative events that are inherently multimodal by incorporating visuals on slides accompanied by spoken commentary. However, despite their ubiquity in higher education, few studies have investigated the rhetorical relations between their auditory and visual modes. This study attempts to address this gap by applying theoretical frameworks for logico-semantics and image–text relations to student presentations conducted online at a private university in Japan. Analysis of over 5 hours of recorded data revealed how clauses in students’ spoken commentary related to visible entities on the screen primarily through exposition and, to a lesser extent, specification, summary, extension and enhancement. A further comparison of different stages within the presentations showed that summary and expansion played a bigger role whenever students provided background information or concluded the presentation. Further, qualitative discussion on selected excerpts sheds light on how the reading path alternated between exposition of visual text through repetition or synonymy and embellishment through specification or enhancement. However, comparing students also indicated that genre-specifics are not yet established for all students. The selection and configuration of logico-semantic relations influenced how slides compensated for verbal deficiencies, which has implications for the English as a Foreign Language context.
{"title":"Logico-semantic relations between spoken text and slides’ visual elements in student presentations conducted online in the English as a Foreign Language context","authors":"Dennis Lindenberg","doi":"10.1177/14703572231180215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231180215","url":null,"abstract":"Student presentations conducted with the help of PowerPoint represent communicative events that are inherently multimodal by incorporating visuals on slides accompanied by spoken commentary. However, despite their ubiquity in higher education, few studies have investigated the rhetorical relations between their auditory and visual modes. This study attempts to address this gap by applying theoretical frameworks for logico-semantics and image–text relations to student presentations conducted online at a private university in Japan. Analysis of over 5 hours of recorded data revealed how clauses in students’ spoken commentary related to visible entities on the screen primarily through exposition and, to a lesser extent, specification, summary, extension and enhancement. A further comparison of different stages within the presentations showed that summary and expansion played a bigger role whenever students provided background information or concluded the presentation. Further, qualitative discussion on selected excerpts sheds light on how the reading path alternated between exposition of visual text through repetition or synonymy and embellishment through specification or enhancement. However, comparing students also indicated that genre-specifics are not yet established for all students. The selection and configuration of logico-semantic relations influenced how slides compensated for verbal deficiencies, which has implications for the English as a Foreign Language context.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82570569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-16DOI: 10.1177/14703572231183168
Hongqiang Zhu, Xiaoping Wu, Pan Pan
Sharing travel experiences through words, pictures and videos on social media has become a popular activity and means of presenting the self. In China, WeChat is the most widely used social media platform. It offers the Moments (朋友圈pinyin: péng yǒu quān, literally ‘Circle of Friends’) feature which provides a tool for users to post photos, short videos and accompanying texts. This study investigates how digital travelogues are technologically afforded and multimodally constructed on WeChat while exploring users’ self-presentation in their travelogues as presented on Moments. To this end, a total of 115 WeChat Moments screenshots are examined. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines these travelogues’ multimodal design, how social life is presented in them and how users display their identity. Specifically, the authors examine how the practice of the Nine Picture Limit (九宫格, pinyin: jiǔ gōng gé) of WeChat Moments is multimodally constructive for producing travelogues. They found that the multimodal strategies adopted in the Nine Picture Limit are not only a matter of designed aesthetics or style for narrating travel experiences, but also a purposeful process of working with images for self-presentation in the spatial narrative. Furthermore, the possibilities that a digital travelogue is viewed as a creative narrative genre in Moments is addressed. Finally, related exploratory research interests such as digital identities, authenticity of travel and mobility are also discussed.
{"title":"Designing and sharing travelogues on Chinese WeChat Moments: a social semiotic analysis of Nine Picture Limit","authors":"Hongqiang Zhu, Xiaoping Wu, Pan Pan","doi":"10.1177/14703572231183168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231183168","url":null,"abstract":"Sharing travel experiences through words, pictures and videos on social media has become a popular activity and means of presenting the self. In China, WeChat is the most widely used social media platform. It offers the Moments (朋友圈pinyin: péng yǒu quān, literally ‘Circle of Friends’) feature which provides a tool for users to post photos, short videos and accompanying texts. This study investigates how digital travelogues are technologically afforded and multimodally constructed on WeChat while exploring users’ self-presentation in their travelogues as presented on Moments. To this end, a total of 115 WeChat Moments screenshots are examined. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this study examines these travelogues’ multimodal design, how social life is presented in them and how users display their identity. Specifically, the authors examine how the practice of the Nine Picture Limit (九宫格, pinyin: jiǔ gōng gé) of WeChat Moments is multimodally constructive for producing travelogues. They found that the multimodal strategies adopted in the Nine Picture Limit are not only a matter of designed aesthetics or style for narrating travel experiences, but also a purposeful process of working with images for self-presentation in the spatial narrative. Furthermore, the possibilities that a digital travelogue is viewed as a creative narrative genre in Moments is addressed. Finally, related exploratory research interests such as digital identities, authenticity of travel and mobility are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90497315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}