My most important site for multimodal literacy is my Facebook page. For over 10 years I have been on Facebook and it has become a very strong habitual activity. I have no problem believing that keeping me on as long as possible is their design.

For the longest time the internet has been the place where I got lost in activity through chatting with others, looking up old acquaintances, and listening to music, but Facebook integrates all these things best. There may be better platforms like Tik Tok, but I’ve found that the majority of my peers use Facebook which keeps me there as well. It’s like we’ve found our home and we’re not going anywhere. At some point the younger generation’s constant migrating will stop at some point too.

Even though the majority of Facebook is written, the spatial arrangement is also essential because other platforms such as LinkedIn emulate the design as well. It is also full of images which draw users in visually. Just like the article mentioned, we can all do the posting and the educating as well as be educated. Visually I post pictures with captions to present something I feel strongly about, or for levity. Every now and then I also post youTube videos containing things like music and movie excerpts. One time I presented orally and visually on Facebook Live my impression of President Obama in order to cheer people up during the early days of the pandemic:

https://www.facebook.com/1315412458/videos/10222904062852830/

Being on Facebook has engaged all my senses which is probably why I spend so much time on it. I’m always interested in what comes next while scrolling through my feed.

Facebook has also been the most effective way of communicating announcements such as class reunions, homecomings, births and deaths. When there were any updates concerning an event, Facebook handled them effectively because everyone involved was on it. Facebook posts also show events happening in real-time and can communicate the mood and other things. One example is Facebook Live posts from my last homecoming party weekend. Everyone could clearly see the fun we were having and it worked as publicity for others to participate in later events. Another example (though maybe not in real time) was the social media post of the killing of George Floyd which aided in the conviction of Derek Chauvin. In this context I find the multimodal interactions useful.

Traditional literacy does pale in comparison to multimodal literacy. I agree that making comparisons and combining different modes of literacy can increase learning because the associations go from linear to a multi connected geometric model. The connections create a model that is more associative.