The production of multimodal texts in digital support by public-school children: opportunities, representations, and cultural practices

Abstract

This article aims to understand some conditions that may interfere in the production of multimodal texts by children, based on their access to digital devices, cultural practices to produce these texts in virtual environments, and some representations on what constitutes a text. We based the analyses in social semiotics, in studies that allow understanding children’s protagonism in the production and dissemination of texts, and their actions in the scope of digital written culture. We collected the data through an empirical qualitative research developed with children from 8 to 10 years old in two public schools, using interviews, direct observations, and proposals to produce texts in digital environments. The results show that children’s process to produce multimodal texts may have several limitations, such as the access and quality of the devices, cultural values, and parental social control, among others. They use more than one representation system, produce multimodal texts in different platforms (in environments such as WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube), employ digital devices for leisure and divertissement, communication, creativity, research, and learning. However, they have a inicial representation that a text is the written verbal text, that writing is done with pencil and paper, having doubts on how to classify hybrid texts. The researched subjects actively produce multimodal texts in non-school contexts, using language as a way to express their tastes and feelings and to participate in real communication practices, broadening their action scope in the world.