Easter eggs and semiotic cues: embedded meaning as early adolescents engage in programming-as-writing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which early adolescent programmers embed meaning in their digital media created within an online programming community called Scratch. Design/methodology/approach The author completed an 18-month descriptive case study with 5 early adolescent participants. The research design included a multimodal analytic analysis of participant artifacts and inductive analysis of semi-structured interviews and transcription frames. Findings Participants embedded meaning to achieve four primary purposes, namely, to guide visitors through exhibits, to story, to engage in conversation and to game. To achieve each goal, the participants embedded unique semantic cues within specific Scratch structures. Research limitations/implications Questions for how researchers in literacy and learning can further explore meaning-making within programming-as-writing are suggested. Practical implications Connections to the supportive structures within Scratch are discussed in the context of programming-as-writing. Considerations regarding the use of Scratch to promote programming-as-writing are provided for educators. Originality/value The findings in this study provide an introductory step toward an enhanced understanding of the ways in which youth embed meaning into digital media as they engage in programming-as-writing. Although coding has been researched within the context of computer science, the use of coding in multimodal composition should be explored as it relates to literacy practices.