Public Defence: Linda Undrum

Linda Undrum is defending her PhD degree. The topic of her thesis is multimodal texts in social media, how lower secondary school students evaluate their digital everyday texts, and how these texts can be utilized in critical literacy education.

19 Dec

Practical information

  • Date: 19 December 2024
  • Time: 10.00 - 15.00
  • Location: Drammen, Auditorium A2503
  • Download calendar file

    • Join digitally (lenke kommer)

    Program 

    Kl. 10.00. Trila lecture: How can humor and irony in social media texts be a resource in the classroom?

    Kl. 12.00. Disputas: Kritisk literacy, multimodalitet og sosiale medier. En utforsking av multimodale fritidstekster og tekstpraksiser på Instagram, ungdommers vurdering av dem, og hvordan de kan inngå i norskfagets arbeid med kritisk tilnærming til tekst.

    Dissertation defence chair: Head of Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies, Jørn Varhaug

    Evaluation committee

    • First opponent: Professor Anna-Lena Godhe, Jönköping Universitet

    • Second opponent: Associate Professor Daniel Lees Fryer, Høgskolen i Østfold

    • Administrator and committee-leader: Associate Professor Ylva Frøjd, USN

    Supervisors

Any questions?

Linda Undrum is defending her thesis for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway. The doctoral work has been carried out at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Sciences. 

You are welcome to join both her trial lecture and public defence.

Linda Undrum. Foto

Summary:

In my dissertation, I have examined the characteristics of some of the texts that shape adolescents' daily lives, specifically texts in social media. I have sought to gain insight into how lower secondary school students evaluate and reflect on their everyday social media texts and how these can be integrated into the Norwegian subject's work on critical approaches to text, with the goal of enhancing students' ability to critically reflect on the diverse texts they encounter.

The dissertation provides new knowledge about social media and adolescents' perspectives on social media texts and communication. It also shows how this knowledge can offer opportunities for didactic development in schools. The analyses in the study reveal that the texts adolescents encounter on social media often combine personal and commercial discourses in ways that make it challenging to identify their purposes and underlying interests. Findings from the study suggest that such blending of discourses has become normalized, leading to the communication being perceived as natural and unproblematic.

Several of the young participants in the study demonstrate an ability to critically reflect on text production in social media. For example, they are aware of digital media technologies and algorithms, which is an important aspect of critical literacy in a reality where technology itself contains ideological meaning. At the same time, the ways in which texts are constructed to influence their audience are rarely problematized by the participants. The study thus reveals a need for more systematic education in analysing the multimodal meaning content of texts.The dissertation also presents a teaching approach aimed at enhancing students' critical text competence. The study demonstrates how allowing students to create their own analogue versions of Instagram posts can help them achieve a necessary distance from their everyday text practices, serving as a starting point for teaching critical literacy.

The dissertation highlights the importance of including digital everyday texts in education to help students develop the skills needed to approach various texts with critical distance and judgment. These skills are essential for navigating safely in an increasingly complex media landscape.