Kein Folientitel

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Mapping the multimodal genres of traditional and
electronic newspapers
John Bateman, Judy Delin and Renate Henschel
Document Design Conference 2004, Tilburg, January
23rd.
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Overview of talk

• What is meant with genre?
• What is meant with a multimodal genre?
• How can genres be mapped?
• the GeM Project
• Application to newspapers and newspaper design
• Discussion weaknesses and strengths of the
  transfer of newspaper editions to the web

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Newspaper design...
Randy Stano, graphics designer for the Miami
Herald, cited in Stephen Ames (1989) Elements of
Newspaper Design. ... weve got to make it
easy for the readers. ... Most readers want
news quickly, easily and they want a lot of it.
Yes, you get people who want the New York
Times ... type stories, but youve got to be
able to break these stories up.
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Newspaper design...

• Suggestions
• break into packages and subpackages using
  subheads,
• pulling out quotes to be set in headline type as
  graphic elements
• making a portion of the story into a sidebar
• The reader needs as many points of entry into a
  package as are feasible. (Stano)

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The GeM Project Genre Multimodality
genre types of
text, types of document
applications
empirical
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Particular sources of inspiration

• Rob Waller
• The typographical contribution to language
  towards a model of typographic genres and their
  underlying structures PhD thesis Reading
  University (1988)
• Günther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen
• Application of functional linguistic methods to
  multimodal documents
• Jim Martin and Jay Lemke
• functional interpretations of genre spaces

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Corpus basics
empirical

• Required structured, consistent, correct
  information for supporting empirical questions /
  hypothesis formation and hypothesis testing

(annotated)
corpus
collection
raw texts
source annotation
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GEM annotation scheme
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Multilayered annotation

• Many tools being developed for this kind of
  enrichment, and many more to come
• XML the Extensible Markup Language
• W3C
• Information-management companies
• Linguistically what are reasonable/useful
  layers of annotation?

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Wallers (1988) model of document design
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The GeM annotation layers

• Content structure
• Rhetorical structure
• Layout structure
• Navigation structure
• Linguistic structure

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Relations between social practice and multimodal
genre
social practice
particular artefact form and tools
established uses of the artefact
developed modes of expression
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The GeM annotation layers

• Content structure
• Rhetorical structure
• Layout structure
• Navigation structure
• Linguistic structure

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Annotation solutions adopted...

• criteria for recognising units

• XML representations throughout

• basic vocabulary of the page images,
  signs, sentences, numbers, ...
• layout units hierarchy determined visually and
  by considering the degree to which elements
  belong together
• rhetorical structure traditional analysis
  according to MannThompsons rhetorical structure
  theory (RST)
• navigation units elements pointing elsewhere in
  the document

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GeM Corpus Entries
http//purl.org/net/gem
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Distribution of information across layers
Semantic Content
Layout
RST segments
layout units
navigational elements
base units
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Distribution of information across layers
Semantic Content
Layout
RST segments
layout units
navigational elements
base units
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Example Derivation of layout structure

• Working visually from the page, decompose the
  objects on the page in terms of their visual
  unity and relative mobility/independence
• Transform the page decomposition into a
  hierarchical structure
• Specify presentation information for units e.g.,
  font size, type, colour, image type, resolution,
  etc.
• Gradually transfer the implicit spatial
  information in the visual image to explicitly
  represented structural information

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1918
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1918
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Complete layout structure

• provides a place for assigning specific
  information about the layout units
• contents given by collections of the base units
  of the page

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GeM layers layout units

• Layout units content defined by cross references
  (xrefs) to base units
• Layout units contain typographical details common
  over the unit and its children
• Typographical information modelled on CSS and
  XSLFO

lttext xref"lay-21.12 lay-21.14 lay-21.16
lay-21.18 lay-21.20" font-family"sans-seri
f" font-size"10" font-style"normal"
font-weight"bold" case"mixed"
justification"right" color"black"/gt
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Annotation solutions adopted

• non-linear information

• positioning of layout units within a page is
  specified two-dimensionally with respect to a
  generalized page model
• the page model decomposes the page area into a
  hierarchy of grids
• specifying the grid for a page is part of the
  annotation task.

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Complete layout structure page model

• each sub-tree can additionally be assigned to a
  position in a hierarchically ordered page grid

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Complete layout structure page model
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GeM layers area model
ltarea-root id"page-frame" cols"1" rows"3"
hspacing"100" vspacing"10 85 5"
height"16cm" width"14cm"gt ltsub-area
id"body-frame" location"row-2" cols"2"
rows"1" hspacing"50 50"
vspacing"100"/gt lt/area-rootgt
16cm
ltlayout-root id"page-21"gt ltlayout-leaf
xref"header-21"
location"row-1" area-ref"page-frame"/gt
... lt/layout-rootgt
Layout units are related to identified elements
of a hierarchical grid specified in the area model
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The Guardian Web Version
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The Guardian Web Version
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Partial layout structure
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Partial layout structure
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Types of content
UK news
Politics
International
Business
Comment
G2
TV etc.
Reviews
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News article
Link to related report
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Navigation menu by newspaper section
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Drop-down links to broader categories
Navigation Drop-down menus by newspaper section
and time general search
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Services
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Navigation front page and index
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Navigation list of titles of further articles
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Daily Telegraph Web version
Daily Telegraph
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Daily Telegraph
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Daily Telegraph
Daily Telegraph Layout structure (partial)
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Daily Telegraph
Daily Telegraph Layout structure (partial)
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The Guardian Print version
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The Guardian partial layout structure
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The Guardian partial layout structure
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Comparative layout structure
print
web
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NEWS OF THE WORLD Web version
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The SUN Print version
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OLIVE SOFTWARE
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Return of the traditional document - even for
the web?

• Why?
• consideration of use of available access
  structures
• task
• organising and providing access to material
• selected rhetorical organisation
• sequence by topic vs. sequence by importance

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Contrasting resources

• Web design for Guardian, Daily Telegraph and
  similar sites
• little use of space
• technology limited (HTML tables with long
  columns extensive scrolling required)
• Print design for all newspapers
• use of space as multidimensional indicator of
  newsworthiness and importance
• off-loading cognitive load of access to spatial
  layout

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Hypothesis...
The virtual artefact constructed through these
production practices and expression decisions may
just not be able to

• express multidimensional newsworthiness and
  importance
• while using this simultaneously as an access
  structure