A corpus-assisted multimodal discourse approach to media literacy.

This discussion, included in Corpora for Language Learning: Bridging the Research-Practice Divide (Crosthwaite, 2024), reflects on ideas and tools demonstrated in the seminar series International Perspectives on Corpus Technology for Language Learning. Drawing on Tony Berber Sardinha’s (November 30, 2021) exploration of multimodal corpora analysis, I implemented a Media Literacy project focusing on the representation of climate change (CC) in digital media. Students created and analyzed a multimodal corpus of captioned images about CC, employing tools such as Google Cloud Vision API and the UCREL semantic analysis system (USAS). This approach allowed students to identify typical multimodal patterns and critically evaluate how media representations of CC can foster vagueness, fear, and disengagement. The study highlights how integrating corpus-based multimodal analysis into educational contexts equips students with practical tools to critically engage with mediated discourses.