Modality

As it relates to the subject of new media and writing, the word modality can be defined as the means by which a message is put into the different means of transmission. Modality is part of a conscious choice to determine the best mode of delivery in order to accomplish the main purpose. A mode is a way to communicate a message to an audience. According to the Writing Skills Lab in Lumen Learning, there are five modes of communication: spatial, linguistic, visual, aural, and gestural. For example, if I send my coworker an email, I am communicating through a visual mode and a spatial mode due to the arrangement of the text in the email. Moreover, scholar Gunther Kress suggests that mode is a way to use other forms of representation to convey a message, besides language.

The concept of modality is often linked to new media because of their correlation. New media provides different modes of communication or how such messages are transmitted. Modality refers to the process of crafting together a message and deciding the best means of delivery. However, it is important to note that modality is a varied concept and it is not exclusive to a specific medium of new media. One of the affordances of modality is that it is very adaptable and can be merged with other modes of communication creating a blending of mediums and types of media in order to create and transmit a stronger message.

Multimodality is the integration of many forms of digital technologies or multiple new media to deliver a message in a creative and new way. Jonathan Alexander, an expert in Clair Lauer’s “What’s in a Name?” explains multimodality as “the multiple ways in which information, communication, meaning-making, meaning breaking, actually occurs,” (Alexander 2007).Marshall McLuhan’s re-envisioned “The Medium is the Message,” produced by Jerome Agel is an example of a message produced with modality in mind (McLuhan’s original writing), that was then edited and presented in a new way using mixed media for the purpose of using multimodality to reach a new audience. The terms of Modality, even multimodality, are not new but have otherwise adapted to meet the technology literacy present within today's generation. These concepts also exist in traditional ways of writing as well. If one writes in pen, a quill and ink, or clay, one is using modality to present a message. If one writes with both a pen and a pencil, one is presenting a multimodal message. People have come to know this as ‘media’ and ‘mixed media.”

Modality is a term that is also not exclusive to writing mediums. According to Gunther Kress, modality is a concept that translates to all facets of language and communication. The mode, or the modality of new media extends to language as well. If one considers digital and visual recordings to be new media, when in relation to the speech one uses, the mode is the way in which one chooses to speak, one’s body language, one’s intonation, and so forth.