Inquiry #19

How Are Artifactual Meanings Made?

Discourses circulate and sediment identity expectations into artifacts through processes of design, production, and marketing. It’s possible to track back these processes, identifying supporting discourses in various systems. This exercise unpacks the multiple kinds of texts in a prevalent example: media franchises. Each text is circulated through structures and strategies in transmedia activity systems: (1) characters in scripts, animation, toys, and consumer products; (2) body ideals in animated films and production designs; and (3) consumer and product user expectations in brand marketing. (The next inquiry exercise examines how further identity expectations layer onto artifactual texts by looking at the ways these are used in interactions among participants.)

Analyzing Histories of Design, Production, and Use

Begin by noticing what’s right there--the logos, brands, and other markers of media affiliations that are so ubiquitous they can be hidden in plain sight.

1. Identify popular media franchises popular with participants in your site of engagement. To do this, discover the media children observe in films, television, YouTube, or video games or the groups they follow on social media. Play-watching, or noticing the media that playgroups incorporate into their play, allows you to see interaction orders as well as the popular themes. Record which franchises are used during play as well as represented on children’s clothing, backpacks, toys, books, and consumer goods.

2. The next step is to view media or play video games yourself to read the underlying narrative and associated identity texts in the cast of characters, their relationships, and the overall storylines. Critically consider who gets presented as an aspirational model and who is denied a “happy ending.” For example, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’ (2019) Dark Fantastic model reveals the racialized elision in the sidelining of protagonists of color in storylines in children’s literature.

3. Moving beyond character narratives, look throughout the franchise to see how identity texts morph as they move across transmedia platforms: from film to video games to retail websites and so on. For example, the character Princess Merida and her body image shifted dramatically after the character was translated from film into a Barbie-style Disney Princess doll, with pink sparkly packaging and advertisements (Hains, 2012).

4. Tracking texts across commercial processes requires a look beyond literacy studies research. Fortunately, newspapers offer glimpses into design decisions, production, and marketing strategies of many new releases (e.g., Murphy, 2012), which are further studied through business administration research literature or media studies (e.g., Forman-Brunell & Hains, 2015). Additionally, manufacturers’ websites, especially webpages that provide annual reports and other resources that companies make publicly available to attract potential investors that track retail sales, target demographics, and marketing strategies that reveal designer expectations for particular players.

5. To identify prevalent discourses that circulate and justify expected uses and designs, consult cultural studies literature (e.g., critical literacy research, media studies, gender studies) relevant to your site of engagement. Because discourses circulate globally, it’s likely that other scholars have already noticed and named prominent discourses that produce gendered and raced effects in media. For example, a robust literature in literacy studies and media fields provides macro-analyses using critical discourse analysis or Foucauldian analyses that deconstruct multimedia and cultural phenomena for discourses that justify inequities in markets, institutions, and networks.