Written by:
Yasemin Allsop, University College London, United Kingdom
Ekaterina Rzyankina, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Sumin Zhao, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Jennifer Rowsell, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Abstract: There are two stories to tell in this multimodal special issue of Digital Culture and Education. One story involves a group of female academics in need of inspiration during pandemic days who decided to produce a multimodal special issue. The other story is a colourful whistle-stop tour of public and private shelves. The through-line connecting both stories is Covid lives lived over a multitude days and ways framed by objects, rites, restrictions interspersed with nature walks, YouTube yoga, and cats on keyboards. Shimmering, fragile, and captive, pandemic life remains in our minds and hearts forever. This issue visualises these extraordinary moments through shelves of all sorts, shapes, and sizes.

Keywords: shelfie, multimodal, pandemic, creativity, visual essay

Written by:
Mark Shillitoe, International School Delft, Netherlands
Harriet Hand, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Jennifer Rowsell, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Abstract: Engaging with the concept of sensory shelfies, this essay exhibits howchildren and adults move across and between sounds, images and objectsto make meaning and to tell stories. We glance beyond boundaries and imagine the notion of the shelf as an ongoing mapping of self where layers of experience enmesh and superimpose, and where our sense of self unfolds in the in-between, liminal spaces. These twelve shelves multimodally depict the porosity and fissures that opened up as we moved fluidly between online-offline spaces alone-together. Putting into practice an experimental and speculative approach to our research (Truman et al, 2020; Springgay and Truman, 2018), we argue for these methods as pedagogies that engage with the dynamic complexity of spaces of self.

Keywords: mapping, multimodality, multisensory, shelfies, relational, pedagogy

Link to soundscape essay

Written by:
Fiona Scott, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Amélie Lemieux, University of Montreal, Canada
Kelly C. Johnston, Baylor University, United States

Abstract: COVID-19 is reshaping working arrangements in traditionally office-based professions. For scholars, these disruptions emphasise the need to examine how literacies travel other-wise (Lemieux et al., forthcoming) through Zoom meetings, shelfie tweets, and bookshelf photographs. Here, we evoke the altered paths that bodies, objects, and ideas are travelling as workers curate, negotiate, and become implicated in ‘zoomentities’. This posthuman, trioethnographic (Breault et al., 2012) piece attempts to map these altered paths.

Keywords: shelfies, literacies, reading', ethnography, collaboration, Zoom

Written by:
Yasemin Allsop, UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
Ekaterina Rzyankina, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Natalia Kucirkova, University of Stavanger, Norway
Jennifer Rowsell, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Janina Wildfeuer, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Sumin Zhao, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract: This visual essay investigated how material objects frame and represent our self and identity, specifically focusing on curating different parts of identity through objects on bookshelves in online spaces. For the purpose of this study, a mixed method methodology was adopted where data was collected through semi-structured interviews and visual analysis (audio/video). There were six participants in this study who are academics from different higher education institutions with a wide range of research interests. The interviews were administered by the participants in pairs via an online platform and the video calls were recorded for data analysis purposes. The data analysis showed that shelfies reveal a specific place of our working environment in very concrete materiality, yet they also contain references to the invisible non-representational side of the social spaces that we interact with. It was clear from the findings that both parts of our identities (personal and professional) were portrayed in shelfies through the use of different materials and objects which were arranged in different styles.

Keywords: shelfies, visual analysis, personal and professional identities; materiality; social space

Written by:
Roberto Tietzmann, PUCRS, Brasil
Carlos Teixeira, PUCRS, Brasil
Samara Kalil, PUCRS, Brasil
Patrícia Cristiane da Silva, PUCRS, Brasil

Abstract: The COVID-19 changed television broadcast production, decentralizing production crews due to WHO recommendations, driving interviews and commentary primarily to online video calls. Journalists and interviewees' residential spaces became part of professional performances, using personal objects such as bookshelves, decorative elements, and furniture to help build a public persona and suggest social status. But, which patterns became recurrent in Brazilian news programs from March to October 2020 as they began to include home-based videos? The authors collected stills from four shows (two national, two regional) over eight months, analyzing them with a mix of off-the-shelf and custom-made digital tools. The results suggested the formation of eight broad categories. However, two meta-categories stood out in the collections: aesthetic and unconcerned. This shows the device screen as a feedback mirror that makes the participants aware of their surroundings. However, the news broadcasted from home includes visual discourses that cannot always be fully controlled.

Keywords: television, broadcast journalism, data visualization, Brazil, COVID-19

Written by: Adam Brown, Deakin University, Australia

Abstract: The social media landscape has fundamentally reshaped the conventional and still commonplace notion of ‘authenticity,’ raising pressing questions over how educators might construct credible and compelling personas to facilitate student learning online. Such questions are now more important than ever in an environment where the global COVID-19 pandemic has enticed countless more teachers to explore the potentialities of the digital world for engaging with students, colleagues, and other stakeholders. This visual essay explores this issue through an examination of the author’s own construction of a ‘teaching self’ on various social media platforms, particularly through the lens of the shelfie. The roles of performativity, playfulness, and the potential for repurposing content are shown to shed light on the complexities of what it means to convey an ‘authentic’ persona online.

Keywords: authenticity; education; social media; teaching self; performativity; digital learning

Written by: Carol Doyle-Jones, Niagara University, United States

Abstract: During the beginning of an online class in a teacher education program, an exchange about a holiday and the associated family traditions prompted the author to share the haphazard pieces of her family’s lives as they were framed through the screen. Favouring the frameworks of New Literacy Studies and New Literacies, this essay showcases the connections made between what is on our shelves when teaching, while in dialogue with a fellow educator. As dialogic partners we contemplate what Pahl and Rowsell (2020) share through living literacies, what literacies and identities could be among the complexities of influencing semiotic factors. While exploring the social practices of everyday life we see our changing roles through the multimodal and multifaceted ways we frame ourselves as educators. This visual essay explores “what’s on the shelf”, how shelfies and identities intersect, and the everyday life of the shelf through the frame of the screen.

Keywords: shelfies, dialogic partners, educator identities, digital spaces, semiotics, pandemic pedagogy

Written by:
Klare Lanson, RMIT University, Australia
Ingrid Richardson, RMIT University, Australia

Abstract: The lived experience of being at home radically shifted during rolling COVID-19 restrictions throughout 2020, with significant impacts on genderised working and parenting practices. This photo essay draws on creative practice ethnography (Hjorth et al., 2020), mobile media studies and new materialism to critically unpack the performative shelfie as a digital-material assemblage that literally displays these effects. As part of a PhD research project entitled Digital Parenting Listening: A Gendered Mobile Media Creative Practice Ethnography, the participatory encounter #listeningtomediatedmothers (2020–2021) enacts the shelfie as a qualitative digital ethnographic probe to creatively explore work-life balance in the lives of 13 participants located in regional Victoria, Australia. It reveals mediated shelfies as complex, multidimensional, and dynamic representations of the mothering self. Lively experiences of digital materiality come to the fore with far reaching socio-technical and creative implications for ethnographies of social media selfie motifs—as a practice of participatory engagement, digital archiving and in situ research.

Keywords: performative, shelfie, self-care, participatory, digital ethnography, work-life balance, digital mother

Written by:
Suriati Abas, State University of New York, United States
G Yeon Park, Korea National Open University, South Korea
Simon Pierre Munyaneza, Indiana University Bloomington, United States
Jae-hyun Im, Indiana University Bloomington, United States

Abstract: In March 2020, when the pandemic hit the nation, elementary school teachers turned to bitmoji classrooms to sustain students’ learning. Multiple virtual replicas of classroom themes were instantly created and shared across social media spaces. The sudden craze prompted the four of us to investigate configurations of book shelves or, s(h)elfies (selfies of books) in bitmoji classrooms. We focused on s(h)elfies that display diverse books with a social justice theme. Using netnography, we examined bitmoji classrooms uploaded onto public Facebook groups for a year. We did critical case sampling, selecting unique cases to examine (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim, 2016). In this visual scholarly article, we provided our analysis of three s(h)elfies undergirded by socio-spatial (Comber, 2015) and multimodal theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). Our findings revealed that s(h)elfies in bitmoji classrooms is not just a trend, but also, a literacy practice.

Keywords: s(h)elfies, bitmoji classrooms, literacy, multimodal literacy, socio-spatial, pandemic pedagogy

Podcast by:
Nick Gray, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Harriet Hand, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Keywords: multimodal editing, shelfie