Within and Outside the Frame: The Nuances of Meaning Making in Digital Environments from the Web Browser to the Metaverse

• In Event: Circling Back and Moving Forwards in Digital Literacies Research

Abstract

Literacy has always been dependent, to some extent, upon virtual realities. Humans shape and interpret sensory information through culturally constructed narratives and use texts created by others to engage in simulations of others’ perspectives. In this poster, the authors examine literacy and meaning-making across a range of digital spaces (e.g., social media apps, webpages, virtual reality) that, to differing extents, provide virtual environments in which people construct understandings and meanings. To do so, the authors introduce a framework that accounts for the increasing spread of immersive virtual technologies. This framework separates within-the-frame digital spaces and literacies, or those that operate via computer screens, smartphones, or other devices entailing new forms of interactive reading and affective engagement, and beyond-the-frame digital spaces and literacies that are experiential in nature, operating via virtual reality headsets or other technologies that extend across a user’s full visual perception and requiring gestural interaction. Across two central sections, the authors outline arguments for how people engage in literacy practices and make meaning within and across a spectrum of various virtual digital spaces, with illustrative examples of spaces along this continuum. These sections emphasize the social, affective, interactive, and experiential nature of literacies across digital spaces. The authors argue that literacy researchers need to re-envision and expand traditional literacy frameworks to account for the unique characteristics of virtual and augmented environments, machine-generated texts, and implications of corporate control of these environments and platforms in terms of information control and access.

Authors

• Brady L. Nash, University of Florida

• Csaba Osvath, University of South Florida