“Uh oh”: Multimodal meaning making during viewing of YouTube videos in preschool

With young children’s increased use of digital technologies, there is increasing interest in their multimodal meaning making. Little is known of the ways that interactions between young children and adults produce multimodal meaning making as an aspect of digital literacies. This chapter explores children’s production of multimodal meaning making during viewing of YouTube videos in a preschool. Video-recorded data are drawn from a large study of young children’s everyday practices with digital technology in preschools and homes. Conversation analysis is used to investigate the multimodal resources employed by the children and their teacher to accomplish individual and shared understandings of recorded events as humorous, out-of-the-ordinary or even dangerous. The chapter contributes to thinking about practices necessary for educators to support children’s multimodal meaning making during use of digital technologies.