From isolation to constellation: Narrative focalisation in current technology disclosures

Abstract

In this article, I explore focalisation in the mediated account of university technology disclosures, a relatively recent digital genre for science and technology commercialisation and institutional promotion through online dissemination and outreach. Born in academic settings, this genre is still in-the-making and highly susceptible to discursive hybridity. My study draws on an eclectic framework that combines the principles of Netnography with Narrative Inquiry, (Critical) Genre and Multimodal Analysis, and Positioning Theory to examine the teller’s role and the telling practices contained in two types of interrelated documents published by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid on its webpage: the institution’s current Technologies Portfolio and a series of salient inhouse innovative technologies/projects rendered in comic-book format, both in their English version. The scrutiny of the 134 samples of the Portfolio and of the 12 instances of comic-books reveals how the hybridity generated by digital affordances influences narrative and, along with it, promotional strategies. I lay special emphasis on the concept of ‘narrative focalisation’ and attempt to answer the famous Goffmanian question “Who is speaking?”, making the point that genre networking is a way of telling and ultimately of institutional branding.