Title
Mediascapes in the accessibility of migrant narratives
Conference name
9th International conference Media for all
City
Country
Spain
Modalities
Date
27/01/2021-29/01/2021
Abstract
The constantly evolving mediascape is highlighting the new role of Media Accessibility (MA) as an area of Accessibility Studies (AS), as well as the wide-ranging social capacities of this newfound role. Within the AS framework, MA has extended its focus beyond persons with disabilities to include all, and individuals are conceived as both epistemic and poietic agents (Greco 2018, 2019). Consequently, MA services are moving from mere instruments to provide access to products, services, and environments for persons with disabilities to tools for the (re)construction of social ontology (Greco 2019; Spinzi 2019).
A case in point is the representation of migration within a variety of digital settings (e.g., museum websites, individual and collective blogs). Against this backdrop, the extensive use of multimedial and multimodal platforms (MMPs) – as part of digital installations, exhibitions, services, storytelling, etc. – has strengthened the status of digital narratives as interactive and accessibility-oriented mediascapes. MMPs are often used to build multimodal narratives of migration, and MA services are used as devices for the creation of inclusive narratives of migration. Moreover, narratives of migration are now made accessible as MMPs, where generations of migrants can speak and have a voice as human beings (Baker 2006; Rizzo 2019; 2020).
The results of the analysis will be investigated by looking into the conceptual categories that migrants themselves activate in terms of lexico-semantic selections for the construal of their “ideational” knowledge frames. More specifically, the scrutiny will be based on the exploration of a corpus composed of Italian and English MMPs, and will adopt a mixed methodology embracing Corpus Linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics. Both the quantitative and qualitative analysis will shed light on the lexico-semantic variations that occur when meaning-making processes take place in the construction of different target-oriented narratives (English and Italian stories) in the context of migration with the purpose of stimulating citizens’ empathy while fostering access to otherness.
A case in point is the representation of migration within a variety of digital settings (e.g., museum websites, individual and collective blogs). Against this backdrop, the extensive use of multimedial and multimodal platforms (MMPs) – as part of digital installations, exhibitions, services, storytelling, etc. – has strengthened the status of digital narratives as interactive and accessibility-oriented mediascapes. MMPs are often used to build multimodal narratives of migration, and MA services are used as devices for the creation of inclusive narratives of migration. Moreover, narratives of migration are now made accessible as MMPs, where generations of migrants can speak and have a voice as human beings (Baker 2006; Rizzo 2019; 2020).
The results of the analysis will be investigated by looking into the conceptual categories that migrants themselves activate in terms of lexico-semantic selections for the construal of their “ideational” knowledge frames. More specifically, the scrutiny will be based on the exploration of a corpus composed of Italian and English MMPs, and will adopt a mixed methodology embracing Corpus Linguistics and Systemic Functional Linguistics. Both the quantitative and qualitative analysis will shed light on the lexico-semantic variations that occur when meaning-making processes take place in the construction of different target-oriented narratives (English and Italian stories) in the context of migration with the purpose of stimulating citizens’ empathy while fostering access to otherness.