IVLA 2026 Charleston: Full Schedule

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10:30am EDT

What Gets Preserved When We Remediate: Accessibility as Visual Memory Work

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT

Accessibility remediation is often seen as a technical or compliance-focused process. This paper presents remediation as visual memory work. It involves a series of decisions that influence how visual images, interfaces, and institutional stories are preserved, changed, or hidden over time. Drawing on library web governance, digital systems cleanup, and Title II accessibility projects, this presentation explores how choices about layout, hierarchy, color, navigation, metadata visibility, and alternative text impact how patrons experience institutional knowledge and history. These decisions require weighing historical accuracy, current usability, and ethical responsibility. They raise questions about whose perspectives are prioritized and whose are ignored. By viewing accessibility as a practice of visual literacy and stewardship, this paper sees remediation as not just meeting requirements but as forward-thinking work that shapes how images, interfaces, and institutional stories are remembered, understood, and valued over time.

Speakers

Kelly Peter

Assistant Professor, Web & Systems Librarian, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

Kelly Peter is the Web and Systems Librarian at Murphy Library, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. With a background spanning IT systems administration and more than fifteen years of library leadership across public and academic libraries, Kelly brings a wide-ranging perspective... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT
Lecture Hall

Paper

10:30am EDT

“Good friends?”: 20th-century LGBTQ+ love and representation in archival instruction

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT

Studio

We all have heard the story: Two people of the same sex living their lives together being labeled as “good friends” despite evidence that would suggest that these people were very much in love with each other. This narrative turns into erasure of LGBTQ+ people in history. But what if we had confirmation of these stories thanks to photographs? And what if we used those photographs as not only evidence but as a teaching opportunity?
In Cornell University Library’s Rare and Manuscript Collections, the Human Sexuality Collection houses several personal photograph albums of LGBTQ+ couples and their communities. These photographs give representation to moments of queer love and joy – unfortunately, not always the story we get to tell when discussing LGBTQ+ people in history. Examples include:

Several of the albums lack details such as names and clear dates – highlighting some of the challenges of archival research. When used in archival instruction, these albums provide students with opportunities to practice visual literacy skills as well as how to explore an item’s materiality for clues when words fail us. Additionally, these albums open the door for conversations about concepts like archival silences, historic collecting practices, and current efforts to better document diverse lived experiences.

Speakers

Emily Beran

Research and Instruction Librarian, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Emily Beran (she/her) is the Research and Instruction Librarian in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. With a background in art history, she tries to incorporate different visual media including manuscript illumination, prints, and photographs... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT
Studio

Paper

10:30am EDT

“We learn from each other”: A Sibling Case Study of Multimodal Identity-Making in a Refugee Youth Literacy Program

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT

Circular Church

In this paper presentation, we examine how two Afghan refugee siblings navigated identity, culture, and belonging through multimodal composing within the Literacy and Community Initiative (LCI), a research-practice partnership focused on the literacy education and well-being of immigrant and refugee youth. LCI integrates critical multimodal literacy, trauma-informed practices, and arts-based approaches to create safe spaces for adolescent expression and meaning-making. Using qualitative case study methodology grounded in critical multimodal social semiotics, we trace Roya's and Ahmad's participation across six sessions over two years, analyzing their writing and visual art as interconnected semiotic systems.
Our research question is: How do siblings' multimodal compositions reflect relational and cultural identity-making within an arts-based and trauma-informed literacy program for immigrant and refugee youth? Our findings reveal that a) familial relationships served as a primary resource for identity construction across both written and visual modes; b) cultural anchors, including language, clothing, religion, and homeland, functioned as recurring semiotic tools through which both youth asserted belonging and resisted displacement; and c) the sibling relationship itself constituted a shared compositional and interpretive framework, with each student's work deepening and contextualizing the other's.
These findings carry implications for how arts-integrated literacy programs can honor the relational dimensions of refugee youth experience. When adolescents compose alongside and in response to one another, multimodal literacy spaces become sites not only of individual voice but of collective meaning-making, cultural affirmation, and well-being.

Speakers

Angela Wiseman

Associate Professor, Literacy Education, NC State University

Angela M. Wiseman, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education at North Carolina State University and Affiliated Faculty at the Center for Visual Literacies at San Diego State University, where her scholarship advances critical visual and multimodal qualitative methods for understanding how youth... Read More →

Majid Komasi

Doctoral Student and Graduate Research Assistant, NC State University

Majid Komasi is a Doctoral Student in Learning Design and Technology at NC State University's College of Education, where he works as a Graduate Research Assistant affiliated with the Literacy and Community Initiative (LCI). His research focuses on the intersections of multimodal... Read More →

Sarah Blankenbeker

Graduate Student, NC State University

Sarah Blankenbeker is a first-year doctoral student in the Literacy and English Language Arts Education program within the Teacher Education and Learning Sciences department at North Carolina State University. She holds a Master of Arts in Reading and Literacy Education from East... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT
Circular Church

Paper

11:00am EDT

Rage Against the Archive: Visual Literacy and the Afterlives of Colonial Photography

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EDT

Studio

Rage Against the Archive is a practice-based research project that examines how colonial photographs can get decontextualized in digital archives, losing their gravitas. This project focuses on "The People of India" (1868–75)—a British ethnographic publication produced after the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny to classify and document colonized natives. The camera functioned as an imperial tool of surveillance and governance, producing visual records that categorized Indian subjects through a racialized lens. These images, originally embedded in ethnographic frameworks that categorized Indian subjects, now circulate online through digitized collections such as the New York Public Library (NYPL), where they are searchable, downloadable, and are also sold as fine art prints.

As these images move from colonial archive to museum websites, their context transforms. Digitization reframes these historical documents as aestheticized commodities, often detached from the power structures that shaped their production. This project asks: How can artists critically engage with institutional archives to interrogate the circulation of colonial images and foster visual literacy in our networked image culture?

Methodologically, this project employs browser-based interventions within NYPL’s online archive. Through real-time HTML editing and a custom browser extension, colonial images are replaced with critical texts, and the commercial purchase options associated with these images are disrupted in an act of Electronic civil disobedience. By intervening directly in the interface through which archival images are accessed, this project demonstrates how digital platforms shape the interpretation of historical photographs. This project critically scrutinizes whether institutional archives like NYPL perpetuate colonial exploitation, raising ethical questions about how we all should consume images of historical atrocities online. Transforming the browser into a performative and pedagogical site, Rage Against the Archive demonstrates that visual literacy today must extend beyond interpreting images themselves to critically examining the technological and institutional systems that organize their display, circulation, and meaning.

Speakers

Anshul Roy

PhD student, University of Colorado Boulder

Anshul Roy (b. 1997, India) is a visual artist with an MFA in Art Photography (2024) from Syracuse University in New York and a B.Tech in Bioengineering (2020) from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Currently, he is a PhD student in the Critical Media Practices department... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EDT
Studio

Paper

11:00am EDT

When Words Enhance Vision: The Role of Audio Description

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EDT

Studio

Following a brief introduction to audio description as a form of accessible intersemiotic translation, this paper advances the hypothesis that, although AD was originally conceived for individuals with visual impairments, this practice could be broadened to encompass a wider, general audience. This constitutes the central claim of our study.
To this end, we present, on the one hand, a fragment from a filmic work whose mise-en-scène features sculptures by a renowned artist, accompanied by various audio descriptions in different languages relating to the same excerpt. This presentation offers an opportunity to reflect on the intended audience, their cultural background, and the reach or dissemination of the artist as conveyed through cinema. On the other hand, we include the audio description of a building of significant architectural interest.
The translation of images makes it possible to introduce, in a brief and concise manner, specific information about the artist, the artwork, or its compositional elements, and even to clarify particular terms. In this sense, it constitutes a valuable tool in the service of education.
Such reflections ultimately serve to confirm or challenge the hypothesis proposed herein.

Speakers

María Valero Gisbert

Associate Professor, University of Parma

Associate Professor at Parma Universtiy (Italy). Research aereas: Audio description, Audiiovisual Translation; Lexicography.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:00am - 11:30am EDT
Studio

Paper

1:30pm EDT

Face2Face: From Lamprey Grid's to the Bounding Box

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT

Studio

What does it mean to encounter someone’s face across time? Face2Face is a research-based art project that draws conceptual parallels between 19th-century anthropological photography and contemporary facial recognition systems, critically examining how images function as enduring tools for classification, surveillance, and ideological control. Both of these forms of “scopic regimes of modernity” view photos as unbiased, objective data that can help in understanding human identity and character through facial structure analysis.

This project draws on the photographic archive of the British colonial administrator Maurice Vidal Portman, who, in the 1890s, photographed the native people of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. These images were produced using Lamprey’s Grid system, a chequered backdrop designed for anthropometric measurement. Colonial subjects were often posed nude, with measuring sticks against the grid. Their bodies became measurable visual evidence for imperial knowledge systems that advanced a pseudoscientific theory of racial hierarchy. Today, these violative images circulate through digital archives such as the British Museum, where they exist as visual datasets.

Face2Face is an interactive art installation that recreates this colonial photographer’s studio and reimagines his lens as a facial recognition system that categorizes the audience. This system is trained on a biased dataset derived from Portman's images and related writings. Here, the colonial archive is transformed into an active computational apparatus—one that gazes at and classifies viewers according to antiquated logics. Through real-time algorithmic categorization, the viewer is placed in the position of the original subject. This encounter foregrounds how these vision systems produce knowledge by reducing humans to data while obscuring their subjectivity. These archival interventions collapse the past and present by tracing a continuum between anthropological photography and computer vision. Face2Face employs historical images not as passive vessels of memory but as active materials that inform visual literacy and cultural memory.

Speakers

Anshul Roy

PhD student, University of Colorado Boulder

Srikar Hari

PhD student, University of Colorado Boulder

Srikar Hari (b. 1993, India) is a visual artist, currently pursuing his PhD in the Critical Media Practices department of the University of Colorado Boulder. He holds an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, USA and a Bachelor’s in Digital Video Production from... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT
Studio

Paper

1:30pm EDT

Teachers Inducting Mexican Cultural Themes through Co-Construction of an Informal Mural

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT

Circular Church

In this presentation, we share the results of a mural co-construction activity with in-service teachers participating in a study abroad program in Mexico that aims to prepare and encourage educators to carry out culturally-reflective representation activities in their own classrooms. The activity was intentionally reflective of and synergistic with the rich heritage of Mexican muralism viewed by participants during study abroad (Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros). The activity tasked teachers with initially collecting a mix of original visuals (e.g., photographs, hand-drawn art, sketches) and printed visual artifacts (e.g., brochures, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, advertisements) in Puebla and Mexico City that reflected Mexican culture, broadly conceived. Teachers were asked to bring at least eight printed images to a reflection session where they met in small groups to share and group images thematically where possible. A facilitator invited groups to share developing themes and asked follow up questions to help differentiate, collapse, and relate themes. A large wall covered in flipchart paper was then used for teachers to attach their images into themed collages. With the informal mural in place, small groups used the Visual Thinking Strategies process (Gardner, 2017; Yenawine, 2013) to critically examine what they had co-constructed and how it reflected Mexican culture (e.g., "What is happening in this picture?" "What do you see that makes you say that?"). In the presentation, we will share the theoretical grounding for our activity, including: preparation for culturally-responsive teaching by becoming learners of culture (Gay, 2010); place-based education and learning in situ (Smith, 2002); and material culture theory that calls for reading physical objects as primary texts (Cunningham, 2004). We will also share results on how well the activity prompted teachers to see and value funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) or community cultural knowledge during their time abroad.

Speakers

Angela Wiseman

Associate Professor, Literacy Education, NC State University

Kevin Oliver

Professor, North Carolina State University

Dr. Oliver is a Professor of Learning, Design, and Technology in the College of Education at North Carolina State University.

Mary Estrada

Assistant Teaching Professor, North Carolina State University

Dr. Estrada is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University.

Michael Cook

Professor, Auburn University

Dr. Cook is a Professor of English Language Arts Education in Auburn University's College of Education

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT
Circular Church

Paper

1:30pm EDT

What Spaces Remember: Sensing Time Through Film, Sound, and Perception

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT

Lecture Hall

What does it mean for a space to remember? And how might that memory be sensed rather than simply observed?

This presentation explores how film and sound engage the layered memory of place, not as a fixed historical record, but as a perceptual experience. Drawing from work across filmmaking, music, and visual direction, it examines how architecture, atmosphere, and sonic presence shape the way time is felt within a space. Projects include a documentary centered on St. James Church (Los Angeles, est. 1920), alongside additional works that explore how environments carry and transform lived experience.

Across these works, sound operates not as accompaniment, but as a force that alters attention, emotion, and spatial awareness. The presence of choral sound serves as one example of how resonance can bridge past and present within a single environment.

Through this creative practice, Justin Baker-Rojas developed the Four Pillars of Human Perception—Presence, Resonance, Meaning, and Movement—as a framework for understanding how individuals engage with image, sound, and space. These pillars emerged through interdisciplinary work and reflect how perception unfolds through the interaction of external stimulus and internal experience.

By sensing time through space, this session invites a shift from interpretation alone toward a more embodied encounter with the environments we inhabit and the memories they continue to hold.

Speakers

Justin Baker-Rojas

Owner, Fuzzy Image Media

Justin is the media coordinator for IVLA

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:30pm - 2:00pm EDT
Lecture Hall

Paper

2:00pm EDT

Destabilized Places of Memory: Hudeček’s Painting from the Perspective of Visual Literacy

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT

Lecture Hall

Aleš Hudeček’s painting opens the problem of memory where the image does not preserve the past as a reconstructable event but organizes it through destabilized place. Rooms, façades, staircases, patterned partitions, decorative floors, sculptural residues, and figures remain clearly recognizable, yet they do not consolidate into one stable site, one historical layer, or one closed narrative. Destabilized place names a situation in which spatial cues remain descriptively strong while staying referentially unsettled.
Against this material, the question becomes what form visual literacy may take when the image remains visually exact but referentially unclosed. Visual literacy is therefore not reduced to the simple ability to ‘read’ an image; it is approached as a practice of seeing that distinguishes among recognition, spatial testing, historical inference, and return to the material surface of painting. Hudeček’s works make it possible to observe why the question of visual literacy becomes especially acute when an image offers many culturally legible cues while resisting rapid interpretive stabilization.
Late-modern and late-socialist design elements enter here into tension with ornamental and baroque-monumental residues. In the Czech context, such forms carry not only stylistic memory but also historiographic and ideological burden. The image thus does not function as a document of one recoverable past, but as a field in which different temporal regimes, experiences, and visual habits collide. Hudeček’s figurative painting therefore opens a productive space for the theory and teaching of visual literacy whenever memory, place, and representation remain in lasting tension without definitive closure.

Speakers

Tomáš Koudela

assistant professor and vice-dean, University of Ostrava

Tomáš Koudela is an assistant professor and Vice-Dean for Communication and Creative Activities at the Faculty of Education, University of Ostrava. He serves as the head of the Visual Studies Centre and leads the interdisciplinary Visual Literacy Research Team. His research focuses... Read More →

Timotej Blažek

postdoctoral researcher, University of Ostrava

Mgr. Timotej Blažek, Ph.D. (*1989) is an art educator and theorist in the field of art education. Since 2022, he has been working at the National Institute of Education and Youth, focusing on research and development in the educational area of Art and Culture, particularly art education... Read More →

Tereza Čapandová

researcher assistant, University of Ostrava

Tereza Čapandová is a research assistant at the Faculty of Education, University of Ostrava, and a member of the Visual Literacy Research Team. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Art Education, focusing on the concept of originality in the context of post-production theory... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT
Lecture Hall

Paper

2:00pm EDT

The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater: Recalling the Artist, Family, and the Newly Imagined

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT

Studio

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, an optician and self-trained photographer, is known for his abject works. Influenced by writers such as Ambrose Bierce and William Blake, Meatyard’s work explores links between real and imagined worlds which come to life in his photographs. Leveraging techniques such as long and double exposure, Meatyard elevates simple landscapes into dreamscapes. Would-be basic portraits are transformed into stills from horror films as grotesquely masked figures stand in abandoned, decaying spaces. What is abject to viewers, though, is familiar for Meatyard: his family and friends are often the subjects of these photographs, transformed into monsters through the masks. His final body of work, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, exemplifies this juxtaposition of strangers and family, playing upon the family artifact of photo albums by inserting unfamiliar, anonymized characters into what is typically used to remember family and precious memories. For Meatyard, this family album is multipurpose. It documents his family and friends, just like a photo album, captures his spirit as an artist, and also carries a narrative that must be supplied by the viewer. The anonymity and dreamlike atmosphere of his pieces abstracts the mundane just enough that viewers can project their stories upon the images. Thus, The Family Album becomes the perfect space to examine photographs as mnemonic devices that allow us to recall and create. This presentation will provide a brief overview of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, then dive into an exploration of his final body of work, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, examining how its numerous meanings can help researchers, educators, and viewers explore new ways to leverage photographs as mnemonic devices.

Speakers

Micaela Deogracias

Outreach and Engagement Librarian, Indiana University Bloomington

Micaela Deogracias is currently an Outreach and Engagement Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington. At the IUB Education Library, she is responsible for creating instructional opportunities to support students in the School of Education, particularly those relating to visual literacy... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT
Studio

Paper

2:00pm EDT

The Impact of Visualization Across Multiple Intervention Phases on the Writing Growth of Bilingual Students as Measured by a Standardized Writing Assessment.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT

Circular Church

The use of visualization in writing instruction has been known to be effective with multilingual learners. Learners of new languages produce more content when they have access to alternative semiotic resources by reducing cognitive demands associated with written expression, However, less is known about the role of visualization as a tool for identity and cultural representation in student-centered, equitable learning environments and its impact on personal narratives. In this presentation, we will discuss the study conducted in a bilingual 4th grade classroom that included the use of visualization across multiple phases of writing instruction focused on personal narratives. In addition to presenting quantitative findings, the discussion of qualitative data will highlight student growth through their increasing command of multimodality in personal narratives, illustrating how visualization supported text generation. The audience will be invited to review and discuss student samples. Implications for the use of visualization in creating inclusive environments to support multilingual students represent their identities, cultural and lived experiences.

Speakers

Priti Haria

Associated Professor of Education, Stockton University

Priti Haria, Associate Professor of Special Education, Stockton University, NJ Priti Haria received her Ph. D in Special Education from University of Delaware with focus on developing genre-specific reading and writing strategies to support school-age students’ comprehension and writing skills. She has several years of teaching and research experience in t... Read More →

Ekaterina Midgette

Associate Professor of Literacy, St. John's University, NY

Ekaterina Midgette, Associate Professor of Literacy, St. John’s University, NYEkaterina Midgette earned a Ph.D. in Literacy from the University of Delaware where she specialized in researching planning and revision strategies for adolescent writers. She completed her graduate degree at Moscow State Linguistic University where she majored in Linguistics and Intercu... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:00pm - 2:30pm EDT
Circular Church

Paper

3:00pm EDT

(IN)VISIBILITY CLOAK EMBODYING WHITENESS, MEMORY, AND TRANSFORMATION THROUGH ARTS BASED EDUCATION RESEARCH

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

Circular Church

This project explores how arts-based educational research can be used to investigate whiteness, memory, and identity through embodied making. Centered on the transformation of an inherited wool cloak, the work engages personal and ancestral narratives as a way to question the social and emotional structures that shape what it means to be a “good” white woman. Drawing from family archives: photographs, lace, handwritten notes; the cloak becomes both material object and living archive, holding tensions between visibility and invisibility, performance and authenticity, harm and healing.
Through an improvisational and tactile process of stitching, transferring, layering, and revising, I worked in a way that prioritized intuition, slowness, and presence over efficiency or outcome. The exterior of the cloak reflects ideals of composure and beauty through formal portraits, while the interior reveals more intimate and complex realities—grief, play, resistance, and contradiction. This duality mirrors the inherited scripts of whiteness and the often-unspoken emotional histories that sustain them.
Rather than seeking resolution, this project embraces inquiry and disruption. It positions artmaking as a method for re-narrating the past, not to fix it, but to open space for new understandings. The work also extends into my role as an educator, highlighting the importance of embodied, relational, and co-created learning environments that challenge dominant norms of productivity and knowledge.
Ultimately, this project is an exploration of becoming; of sitting with discomfort, honoring complexity, and using creative practice to hold space for transformation.

Speakers

Amy Sparks

Assistant Extension Professor, University of Minnesota Extension Youth Development

Amy Sparks is a University of Extension Educator in Youth Development and a PhD student whose research explores arts-based, embodied, and liberatory approaches to education, with a focus on identity, belonging, and youth empowerment. She is dedicated to innovating and implementing... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
Circular Church

Paper

3:00pm EDT

Behind the Handbook: Editing and Curating Perspectives on Visual Inquiry

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

Studio

This presentation reflects on the editorial and curatorial process behind the Handbook of Visual Inquiry: Methods and Pedagogies for Visual Literacy. The aim of the book is to provide a comprehensive, accessible, and critically grounded resource on visual research methods and pedagogical approaches for visual literacy in education. As visual communication increasingly shapes how knowledge is produced, circulated, and learned, educators and researchers face the challenge of engaging with images not only as teaching aids, but also as objects of inquiry and as modes of thinking and producing knowledge.
Rather than focusing exclusively on the book’s content, this talk examines the intellectual and collaborative labor involved in assembling a multi-author volume in an emerging interdisciplinary field. It discusses the editorial decisions that shaped the conceptual framework of the handbook, the process of curating contributions across diverse methodological traditions, and the strategies used to balance accessibility, critical rigor, and pedagogical relevance.
By sharing insights from this editorial process, the presentation aims to illuminate how academic handbooks function not only as repositories of knowledge, but also as curatorial interventions that help articulate and consolidate developing areas of research and teaching in visual inquiry and visual literacy.

Speakers

Dana S. Thompson

Research and Instruction Librarian, Murray State University

Dana S. Thompson is a research and instruction librarian and associate professor at Murray State University. Dana currently serves as the President of the International Visual Literacy Association and has served as a member of the ACRL Visual Literacy Taskforce. Her research and teaching... Read More →

Ricardo Lopez-Leon

Lead Researcher, Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes

Gemini dijoRicardo Lopez-Leon is a Lead Researcher-Lecturer at the Design Sciences Center of the University of Aguascalientes, Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in Art and Sciences for Design, specializing in applied aesthetics and semiotics, from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. As... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
Studio

Paper

3:00pm EDT

Social Media Elicitation as a Methodology

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

Lecture Hall

Research on media theory and media literacy has long held that mediated messages can help shape the way audiences come to view the world. To date, researchers have looked at how film and television depictions of teachers, classrooms, and students play a role in shaping how pre-service teachers come to think about and prepare for their students. However, the widespread use and adoption of social media represents a significant shift in how media are disseminated, consumed, produced, and reproduced - and this shift, which blurs the once starkly-drawn line between producer and consumer, is one that also affects how today's pre-service teachers think about and prepare for their future classrooms. As part of my dissertation study on critical social media literacy skill development amongst pre-service teachers, I gathered date using media elicitation interviews. In such interviews, media are used to elicit responses by helping ground the interview within the subject matter. In this case, I asked participants to gather examples of relevant social media to bring in and discuss as part of their interviews. Thus far, social media elicitation is a methodology that has the potential to be messy. This methodology has proven promising - participants revealed that in engaging with social media, they generally take on the role of consumer and actively search for positive messaging about teaching. They also reveal that while they are mindful of the affect of the algorithim on their viewing habits, they are less critical of content creators who present themselves as "real educators". However, I am interested in proposing a session in which attendees can discuss the methodology and share experiences with using social media as a learning tool.

Speakers

Alicia Burnette Whitley

Graduate Student, North Carolina State University

Alicia Whitley is a PhD Candidate from North Carolina State University whose work focuses on pre-service teacher education and critical media literacies.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
Lecture Hall

Paper