Digital Media Stories Through Multimodal Analysis: A Case Study of Erahoneybee’s Song About a Child Welfare Agency

Tuber Erahoneybee’s digital media story Song About a Child Welfare Agency provides YouTube audiences with a glimpse into a student intern’s experience of human service work. This article uses Erahoneybee’s story as a case study in the application of multimodal analysis with digital media story texts. Application of multimodal analysis in this way supports multiple and open readings of these texts, which highlight meanings made from the multiple communication modes and the convergence of these modes as present in this digital story. The analysis suggests the complex and political nature of personal stories of human service work and the need for additional research into the possibilities of digital media stories in the field. Tuber Erahoneybee's digital media story Song About a Child Welfare Agency provides YouTube audiences with a glimpse into a student intern's experience of human service work. This story serves as an example of the potential uses of digital media in the field. Across the sector, technology-based story-making practices are becoming alternatives for client engagement, engagement, professional development, and critical reflection. Digital media stories are understood to facilitate multimodal and multivocal meaning making. Multimodal analysis acknowledges, explores, and legitimizes the presence of multiple meanings and voices within singular texts and thus is highly useful in analysis of digital media stories. Multimodal analysis leans heavily on the process of deconstruction to facilitate the examination of meaning. Multimodal analysis and digital media storytelling share a common paradigmatic orientation with post-modernism and post-structuralism. Representation and the politics of representation become key elements in story analysis.