Traversing Analog and Digital Modes: The Zigzag of Reading Multimodal Texts

This qualitative case study examined how 10th grade readers connected to, made meaning from, and experienced a multimodal novel; The novel, Chopsticks (Anthony & Corrall, 2012), is told primarily through images, and secondarily through a combination of images, words, and intertextual references (often hyperlinked) to texts that included audio and video (e.g. playlists, YouTube videos, albums). We situate this study using reader response theory and three specific focus areas within literacy studies: (1) communities of readers, (2) multimodal literacies, and (3) critical multiliteracies. Our findings detail students’ meaning-making experiences through the following collaborative multimodal reading practices: (1) sleuthing and theory-building, 2) traversing digital and analog spaces, and 3) engaging in zigzag polyvocality. Discussion and implications center the importance of collaboratively reading as a community, progressing the pedagogical and instructional concept of polyvocal multimodal reading, as well as the concept of zigzag reading, which encourages recursive, dialogic reading engagement from a variety of textual entry points that develop and embody critical connections across textual modes.