The structural links between screens can take a number of forms, such as: index-like
lists, nested structures, tree structures, semantic links (linking for example, a car with
transport: the link 'is' 'kind of). Along side the software or web designer's selection of
these organisational structures, semiotic potentials such as direction, distance from
the home page (position in the structure), what is linked to what (i.e. classification),
and the contrast between the styles of different page, combine to realise meaning. For
example, narrative is a structure used by designers to present information which
avoids the explicit navigation metaphor. Narrative involves the story being told
(content) and the conditions of its telling (structure and context) (Oren et al, 1990;
Don, 1990). Characters or guides are sometimes used to suggest story-like structure
and to shape the mood of an application. Information, facts and instructions are often
embedded in the narrative structures as are the point of view of the storyteller and
reoccurring cultural themes. Genre is, as I will show, another tool for the organisation
and presentation of information on screen.
The Screen as a Site of Display
In this thesis I explore the different sites of display of the page and the computer
screen, in order to examine how people’s engagement with these can bring-forth
different kinds of expectation and forms of engagement. In Chapter Four, for
example, I focus on how the move from the medium of the book and the page to the
medium of the CD-ROM and the screen can enable the ‘novel as CD-ROM’ to be
‘read’ as ‘book’, ‘film’, ‘cartoon’, or ‘musical’. In short how the genre of a text can
be changed by a user’s engagement with the facilities of the medium and the screen
as a site of display. Throughout the thesis I argue that the computer screen features in
students’ construction of meaning through their gesture with the screen itself and the
construction of different kinds of spaces on screen. I show how the screen is brought
into students’ multimodal meaning making in a variety of ways.
There are many distinctions between the computer-screen and the page, including its
size and shape, the potential for dynamic representations, and permanence. The shape
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