Diverse Texts in Online Spaces: Online Multimodal Reading Strategies and Civic Engagement with Social Issues

Abstract

This article reconceptualizes the notion of diverse texts in literacy education by extending it beyond traditional print-based materials to include online multimodal texts that integrate images, videos, and written language to engage students with social issues. Drawing on a case study of four sixth-grade students in South Korea, this study examines how elementary readers make meaning from multimodal online texts about child labor that contain visuals, videos, and written words. Multiple data sources including verbal protocols, screen-recorded reader–computer interactions, retrospective interviews, and written pre- and post-knowledge reports were analyzed to capture students’ strategic and civic engagement processes. Findings indicate that students employed a range of online multimodal reading strategies to comprehend texts while also demonstrating shifts in civic orientations, moving from personally responsible perspectives toward more participatory and justice-oriented stances. Although their reading paths differed, students grappled with issues of justice and inequality, suggesting that online multimodal reading can serve as a space for developing civic literacy practices. These findings position multimodal texts, which consist of more than one mode of representation, as a form of diverse texts that not only support comprehension but also foster civic learning, engagement, and children’s emerging civic agency in navigating complex social issues in digital environments.

1. Introduction

Online readers engage with multimodal texts that utilize various modes of meaning representation, such as images, written words, sounds, and videos. Online multimodal reading (OMR) is common for today’s readers, as most texts encountered on screens are multimodal. Modes refer to sociocultural resources for making representations and meanings in speech, writing, image, gesture, music, and so on (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; New London Group, 1996), and multimodal texts refer to texts that utilize a variety of these modes to communicate or represent concepts and information (Serafini, 2014). Because online texts are multimodal, readers must employ reading strategies to effectively make meaning from multiple modes in order to understand what is presented on the screen. This is particularly relevant for K–12 readers, who frequently read online texts to conduct research. However, OMR is complex, as readers must comprehend hyperlinked webpages that contain multiple modes and potentially misleading information (Cho & Afflerbach, 2015; List & Alexander, 2017; McGrew, 2020). This can be especially challenging for children, as young readers may have difficulty evaluating credibility and making epistemic decisions while constructing meaning from complex online texts. Therefore, students should learn and practice OMR strategies to effectively comprehend meaning on the Internet.

In the meantime, engaging with social issues through digital texts has become increasingly necessary as students encounter information online that shapes how they understand the world (Kahne et al., 2016; Leu et al., 2015). Social studies scholarship emphasizes that civic education should engage learners in examining issues of injustice, inequality, and collective responsibility through inquiry and discussion (Parker, 2003; Banks, 2017). In this sense, reading about social issues in online environments is not merely an act of cognitive reading but a form of civic meaning-making. However, these practices are especially demanding for younger learners, as they must integrate multimodal information while evaluating sources and considering multiple perspectives (Cho & Afflerbach, 2015; Breakstone et al., 2019). Such epistemic practices are still developing in elementary students, making it difficult for them to navigate online texts independently, and are challenging even for older students and adults (Wineburg & McGrew, 2017). Therefore, civic online reading should be explicitly taught in classroom settings, where students can be supported in developing both strategic reading practices and civic understanding (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). Therefore, we focused on OMR for civic learning, which represents a common digital reading experience for today’s children. Two research questions guided our inquiry:

• How do students use online multimodal reading strategies to comprehend social issues?
• How do students’ forms of citizenship shift as they engage with online multimodal texts?

2. Literature and Framework

2.1. Online Multimodal Reading and Strategies

OMR refers to the act of constructing meaning from single or multiple multimodal texts on the Internet using more than one mode of meaning representation (Ahn, 2023). OMR strategies refer to readers’ goal-directed attempts to construct meaning from multimodal texts on the Internet (Ahn, 2023). Today’s students need to be able to consume and produce a range of multimodal digital texts as they learn both in and out of school. Learning on the Internet requires students to develop new literacy competencies to effectively navigate online spaces (Coiro & Dobler, 2007; Cho, 2014; Leu et al., 2013). Online reading strategies identified in research include navigating and locating relevant texts (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Cho, 2014; Leu et al., 2015), evaluating the credibility of online information (Leu et al., 2015; McGrew, 2020), integrating visual and linguistic modes (Fazio et al., 2022; Park et al., 2020; Salmerón et al., 2020), and self-monitoring (Cho & Afflerbach, 2015; Goldman et al., 2012) during meaning-making. Prior research on online reading provides a foundation for examining the intersection between traditional and online reading strategies and identifying which strategies support successful online reading (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Bråten et al., 2020). Building on this work, a systematic review suggests that students must develop multimodal reading strategies, such as integrating visual and written information, image searching to understand concepts, and selecting preferred modes to understand main ideas, in addition to traditional hypertext reading strategies (e.g., navigation, searching, source evaluation, self-monitoring), to become competent online readers (Ahn, 2026; Cho, 2014). However, while identifying similarities and differences between traditional and digital text reading is valuable, much of the existing research does not explicitly address multimodal meaning-making. OMR warrants greater attention within digital and disciplinary literacies, as multimodality is a defining characteristic of the Internet. The increasing availability and accessibility of multiple and non-traditional texts have transformed the reading landscape, making it increasingly visual as readers encounter and produce texts that integrate images, videos, and interactive features, particularly through digital platforms and social media (Bråten et al., 2020; Kress, 2003; Støle et al., 2020). Despite growing research on online reading, limited attention has been paid to how elementary students engage with online multimodal texts and how their strategic meaning-making intersects with civic learning. This study addresses this gap by examining students’ online multimodal reading strategies alongside their evolving civic orientations.

2.2. Critical Civic Education and Civic Meaning-Making

Critical civic education extends beyond the transmission of civic knowledge to emphasize how learners interpret, question, and respond to social conditions within their everyday lives (Swalwell & Payne, 2019). Grounded in traditions of critical pedagogy, this perspective positions civic learning as an ongoing process of engaging with issues of power, inequality, and justice rather than as preparation for future participation (Banks, 2017; Freire, 1970/2018; Parker, 2003). Within this framing, students are understood as active meaning-makers who bring their experiences, identities, and perspectives to encounters with social issues. Consequently, civic education involves not only what students know about civic life, but how they come to understand and position themselves in relation to social problems and collective responsibilities.

A key contribution to this perspective is the framework of citizenship proposed by Westheimer and Kahne (2004), which conceptualizes citizenship as encompassing three orientations: personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented approaches. Personally responsible citizenship emphasizes individual responsibility and moral behavior, such as helping others or acting ethically in everyday situations. Participatory citizenship focuses on active involvement in community and collective efforts, including organizing or contributing to group actions. Justice-oriented citizenship, in contrast, foregrounds the critical examination of structural conditions and systemic inequalities that shape social issues. This framework highlights that civic learning is not uniform but involves qualitatively different ways of engaging with social problems, ranging from individual responses to collective and structural understandings. In this study, we use this framework as an analytic lens to trace how students’ civic orientations emerge and shift as they engage with social issues through online multimodal texts.

Importantly, recent scholarship challenges assumptions that such forms of civic engagement are beyond the reach of younger learners. Studies demonstrate that elementary students can meaningfully engage with questions of fairness, injustice, and responsibility when classroom contexts support inquiry and dialogue (Swalwell & Payne, 2019; Payne et al., 2025). From this perspective, civic learning emerges through everyday interpretive practices, including reading, discussion, and collaborative sense-making, rather than solely through formal civic instruction. The National Council for the Social Studies (2013) C3 Framework further reinforces this view by positioning civic learning within inquiry-based processes such as questioning, evaluating evidence, and constructing informed conclusions. These processes closely parallel literacy practices, suggesting that engaging with social issues through texts constitutes a key place where civic and literacy practices intersect.

2.3. Heuristics of Digital Literacies for Learning Social Issues Learning

This study draws on Coiro’s (2021) multifaceted heuristic of digital reading as the theoretical framework for examining students’ OMR in the context of social issues. This framework conceptualizes digital reading as a multidimensional process shaped by the dynamic interaction among readers, texts, tasks, and sociocultural context, rather than as a fixed set of skills. It is particularly helpful for situating OMR within broader digital literacy practices that involve both cognitive and sociocultural perspectives. In this study, the framework provides a lens for examining how students’ strategic processing of multimodal texts intersects with their sociocultural positioning and civic orientations when engaging with social issues. By integrating these dimensions, the framework enables an analysis of how students’ reading processes and civic understandings co-develop during OMR. Accordingly, this study uses this framework to examine the interplay between students’ multimodal reading strategies and their evolving civic orientations as they engage with social issues in online multimodal environments.

In summary, this study integrates the civic orientations and OMR strategies within a broader digital reading framework to examine how elementary students read and engage with civic issues on the Internet. Research at the intersection of online reading and civic learning has become increasingly important as students regularly encounter multimodal information in digital environments and on social media. As online texts combine written language with videos, visuals, and interactive features, students may be more likely to accept multimodal information without critically evaluating its credibility or underlying perspectives (Klawitter & Hargittai, 2018; Salmerón et al., 2020). This concern is particularly important for elementary students, who are beginning to develop digital, multimodal, and civic literacy practices as they increasingly engage with online information.

Despite these shifts in how students encounter information, limited attention has been paid to how elementary students engage with online multimodal texts, how they interpret and evaluate multimodal information, and how strategic meaning-making intersects with civic learning in online contexts (Kiili et al., 2023). By examining how elementary students engage with online multimodal texts on social issues, this study contributes to a growing understanding of how multimodal reading practices shape students’ emerging civic interpretations of these issues. Together, these frameworks provide a conceptual foundation for understanding how students develop civic orientations while engaging with social issues, as well as the cognitive and strategic processes involved in learning from online multimodal texts.

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

Data collection took place over two weeks in December 2022 at an elementary school in Seoul, South Korea. Five sixth-grade students (age 12) met with the principal investigator (PI) after school for 1.5 h in a classroom. These students were recommended by their homeroom teacher as competent readers capable of verbalizing their thinking during reading. Each student met with the PI individually. Parent and student consent were obtained beforehand. During data analysis, one student was excluded due to limited agency in demonstrating unique strategic behaviors (e.g., primarily reading written text linearly, minimal interaction with multimodal sources, limited verbalization of interpretive or evaluative responses). Ultimately, data from four participants—Doyoon (male), Jihoon (male), Minji (female), and Sohee (female)—were included in the analysis. The participants demonstrated varied patterns of engagement during the OMR task, which informed the analysis of their strategic and civic meaning-making processes presented in the findings.

3.2. Online Multimodal Reading Task

Participants completed an identical OMR task individually on a researcher-provided laptop for 20 min. They were asked to think aloud while engaging in OMR with three researcher-provided online multimodal texts on a social studies topic, child labor. This topic was selected from the sixth-grade Korean National Social Studies Standards ([6 Social Studies 02-02]. Students are expected to explore real-life cases that require the protection of human rights, understand the importance of human rights, and develop dispositions toward protecting them (Ministry of Education, 2015). This standard introduces child labor as a global issue. It was chosen because we anticipated that students could draw on their prior knowledge and evoke thoughts and emotional responses when considering children of similar age. Students’ prior knowledge was explored through a written pre-reading knowledge report, which provided insight into their baseline understanding of the topic before engaging in the OMR task. To reduce the automatic use of skills and encourage goal-directed strategy use, the task was designed to be neither too difficult nor too easy (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). In this study, this was operationalized by selecting grade-appropriate texts aligned with the sixth-grade curriculum and a topic for which students were expected to have some prior familiarity. Students had previously learned about child labor through the Children’s Rights Center, and thus possessed basic prior knowledge.

Participants wrote about their prior knowledge of child labor before the OMR task and reported what they learned afterward on a tablet PC. A 10-min semi-structured retrospective interview followed, during which the PI and each student reviewed the screen recording together. The PI instructed participants to read all three multimodal texts within the 20-min session, but emphasized that they did not need to read linearly or cover all parts of the texts. The PI encouraged participants to engage with multiple modes (referred to as “various forms of information”) to learn as much as possible about the topic. Participants were also allowed to search for additional information as needed to approximate authentic online reading practices.

3.3. Data Collection

We employed a case study design, allowing for the detailed examination of civic engagement in an authentic online reading context while valuing each student’s unique context within multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 2017). The primary data consisted of verbal reports produced by participants while reading three online multimodal texts. Each student’s verbal report was complemented by screen-recording videos that captured their online reading behaviors, including scrolling, clicking, navigation paths across multimodal texts, pauses, and switching between modes. These reader–computer interaction recordings were used alongside verbal protocols to identify evidence of strategy use and meaning-making processes within online reading contexts. Verbalizations were interpreted in relation to the participants’ observable on-screen actions to identify strategic processes during reading. Additional data sources included pre- and post-reading written knowledge reports and retrospective interviews conducted immediately after reading to enhance the accuracy and depth of interpretation. All data sources were transcribed and organized in a Google spreadsheet, resulting in a matrix for each participant. Each participant’s data matrix served as an organizational tool for aligning multiple data sources rather than as a predefined coding scheme (see Appendix A).

3.4. Data Analysis

Based on each participant’s data matrix, their civic orientations during OMR were analyzed through multiple coding cycles (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Initial coding aimed to identify emerging patterns of civic orientations both within individual cases and across cases (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). OMR strategy coding was informed by the participants’ verbalized thinking and their observable online reading actions captured through screen recordings. OMR strategies were also coded to examine how students’ strategic processing intersected with their civic sensemaking during online reading.

Scenes for civic sensemaking analysis were selected from the transcribed matrix (see Appendix A) when the scene demonstrated evidence of civic orientations (

Table 1. Civic orientations during OMR (adapted from Westheimer & Kahne, 2004).

Civic Orientation	Definition
Personally-Responsible Citizen (PRC)	Emphasizing individual responsibility or moral duty when interpreting social issues
Participatory Citizen (PC)	Emphasizing collective participation or community involvement in addressing issues
Justice-Oriented Citizen (JOC)	Critically examining broader structural or systemic causes of social problems

). We repeatedly watched each student’s OMR video, reviewed their knowledge reports before and after OMR, and revisited the data matrix to code civic orientations across data sources. To enhance analytic reliability, both researchers independently reviewed and coded selected scenes before comparing interpretations and resolving disagreements through discussion. OMR strategies were coded using the same process, and we identified overlapping scenes in which students simultaneously demonstrated civic sensemaking and strategic OMR processes, which are described in the findings.

3.4.1. Civic Sensemaking Analysis

To examine how students interpreted social issues during OMR, we conducted coding cycles focused on students’ civic sensemaking across the reading episodes. In this study, the term “civic sensemaking” is operationally defined as the process through which learners interpret and evaluate social issues by connecting textual information to moral judgments, social responsibilities, and broader societal contexts. Segments of verbal protocols, screen recordings, and retrospective interviews were analyzed to identify moments when participants interpreted social conditions, expressed moral evaluations, or connected the text to broader social responsibilities. To analyze these interpretations, we drew on Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) framework of democratic citizenship as an analytic lens, coding students’ responses for instances reflecting personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented citizenship (Table 1). Rather than categorizing students into fixed types of citizenship, the coding attended to how these orientations appeared and shifted across reading moments as students interacted with multimodal texts about child labor. This approach allowed us to trace how students’ civic interpretations emerged dynamically during the OMR process while engaging with different modes of information.

3.4.2. Online Multimodal Reading Analysis

To examine students’ strategic meaning-making during OMR, we applied a taxonomy of OMR strategies drawn from prior studies (Ahn, 2023, 2026). The coding scheme included strategies such as metacognitive monitoring, evaluation of multimodal sources, mode selection, mode searching, understanding meanings of mode, prior knowledge use, intertextual linking of multimodal sources, multimodal navigation, and question making (

Table 2. Coding scheme for OMR strategy use (Ahn, 2023, 2026).

Online Multimodal Reading Strategy	Definition
Metacognitive Monitoring	Utilizing higher-order thinking, which involves active control over the cognitive processes and task management
Evaluating Multimodal Sources	Determining the credibility or quality of the multimodal text or modes
Mode Selection	Choosing modes to read or not based on certain criteria
Mode Searching	Performing information searching in different modes using various online search chains or sources
Understanding Meanings of Modes	Reading modes and making meanings from integrating modes or reading single-mode information
Prior Knowledge Use	Applying prior knowledge about a topic or procedural knowledge on online or multimodal reading
Intertextual Linking of Multimodal Sources	Making mental links between different texts or modes scattered around the online space
Multimodal Navigation	Making unique routes for online reading and remembering reading paths
Question Making	Making questions during reading to enhance engagement or understand the text better

). The coding also remained open to identifying additional strategies that emerged from the data. OMR strategy coding was conducted to examine how students’ strategic processing intersected with their civic sensemaking during the reading task. Interpretations of newly identified strategies were further informed by the constructively responsive model (Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995), which provided a broader theoretical lens for understanding strategic reading processes across print and digital contexts.

3.4.3. Data Analysis Process Example

To illustrate the coding process, we provide an example from Minji’s data matrix (see Appendix A). While reviewing Minji’s matrix, which integrated the timeline, screenshots, think-aloud transcripts, civic orientations, OMR strategies, retrospective interview responses, and written knowledge reports, we identified a scene in which she watched a video depicting a child using an electric saw without safety equipment. During this scene, Minji thought aloud, “(gasps) it looks dangerous”, while the dubbed narration in the video explained that “it’s really dangerous to do woodworking without safety gear”.

Both researchers independently reviewed the 15-s OMR segment and coded the scene as reflecting personally responsible citizenship (PRC) and the mode integration strategy, as Minji simultaneously interpreted visual and verbal information presented in the video. We also examined her retrospective interview and written knowledge report around that timeslot to support the interpretation of the scene and to better understand her meaning-making process across data sources.

Once all participant matrices were coded separately in this manner, the researchers compared coding decisions, cross-checked interpretations, and resolved disagreements through iterative discussion. Integrating the timeline, screenshots, think-aloud transcripts, knowledge reports, and retrospective interviews allowed us to develop more grounded interpretations of students’ civic sensemaking and strategic OMR processes.

The analysis was conducted first within individual cases and then across participants to identify patterns in how civic sensemaking unfolded during multimodal text reading. Through constant comparison across cases and iterative discussions among the authors, we examined how students’ civic sensemaking intersected with their OMR patterns, revealing recurring themes in how multimodal reading practices intersected with students’ civic orientations during online reading.

4. Findings

4.1. Result 1: Civic Sensemaking as an Emergent Process in Online Multimodal Reading

Students’ engagement with online multimodal texts was best characterized as an ongoing process of civic sensemaking rather than as movement across defined categories of citizenship (PRC, PC, JOC), with students shifting fluidly back and forth among different ways of understanding the issue rather than progressing in a fixed or linear sequence. For example, as students read multimodal sources such as videos, written descriptions, and photos about child labor, they engaged in understanding meanings of modes by integrating information across different modes. They also applied evaluating multimodal sources to determine the trustworthiness of the multimodal information. They were also selectively attending to different modes of information through mode selection to improve their comprehension. As students interacted with videos, written words, and visuals about child labor, they continuously interpreted, evaluated, and connected information to broader social meanings, such as issues of fairness, inequality, and the social and economic conditions shaping children’s lives beyond the immediate context. Within this process, elements of personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented citizenship (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) appeared intermittently, often overlapping within single moments of interpretation rather than forming discrete or stable orientations.

However, a consistent pattern across participants was the emergence of affective responses that grounded initial interpretations of social issues related to child labor. For instance, Minji integrated information across multiple modes to understand different forms of child labor, drawing on photographs depicting children hammering bricks and collecting garbage, as well as written descriptions explaining that “they make 90 cents”. Screen-recording data showed Minji rapidly scrolling through images of child labor, pausing and circling her cursor over a photograph of children hammering bricks before moving to written descriptions of their working conditions and compensation. She later described child labor in the retrospective interview as a situation in which “children who are not yet ready to work are made to work”, connecting these multimodal representations to issues of unfair compensation. Similarly, in her written knowledge report, she noted that “they make soccer balls all day but receive only a very small amount of money (approximately 200 KRW)”. Such responses reflected a moral evaluation of the situation, often framed through empathy and concern for children’s well-being, aligning with elements of personally responsible citizenship (PRC). Similarly, Sohee characterized child labor as occurring when “children cannot go to school and work in poor environments”. These responses illustrate how students made sense of social issues through immediate ethical judgments, foregrounding harm, unfairness, and vulnerability, which is essential for their online civic engagement.

At the same time, students frequently extended these interpretations beyond affective responses to consider forms of individual or collective civic actions. Minji noted that after learning about child labor in products such as clothing and chocolate, “I think I will think about child labor when buying branded clothes… I want to donate to help children”. Here, the student’s interpretation of the issue led to imagined behavioral changes, including ethical consumption and charitable giving. In another analysis, Sohee suggested that “to prevent child labor, support such as food and money should be provided to families”. These reports indicate how civic sensemaking involved not only recognizing a problem but also considering possible civic responses, even if these responses remained tentative or hypothetical, reflecting elements of participatory citizenship (PC).

Importantly, students’ interpretations also included emerging efforts to explain the structural conditions underlying child labor. Several participants explicitly linked child labor to economic hardship, suggesting that it occurs “in families that are poor and need money to survive” (Sohee). Jihoon (Figure 1) also explained that children “work for a very long time and get extremely little compensation”, and “cannot get education and work instead”. These responses reflect attempts to move beyond surface descriptions toward causal reasoning, identifying poverty and inequality as underlying factors, consistent with justice-oriented citizenship (JOC). In some cases, students also questioned broader systemic conditions, asking why such practices persist despite social development and whether alternative systems of support, such as “fair trade,” might be possible (Doyoon).

These different civic orientations did not appear in a linear or hierarchical sequence. Rather than progressing from one form of citizenship to another, students often moved back and forth between affective responses, action-oriented thinking, and structural reasoning. In many cases, multiple orientations coexisted within a single scene. In such moments, elements of personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented citizenship were simultaneously present within a single act of civic sensemaking. For example, Minji simultaneously expressed concern for children’s suffering (e.g., using dangerous tools, working perpetually to afford groceries), expressed willingness to donate money, and reflected on the broader scale of child labor, noting that “child labor is more widespread than I thought… we need to help to stop it”. Similarly, Sohee combined explanations of economic hardship with suggestions for increased social support, indicating an overlap between structural understanding and action-oriented thinking.

Some responses initially focused on defining child labor and identifying its observable characteristics, such as “children working long hours and receiving very little pay” (Jihoon, see Figure 1). However, these responses did not remain at a purely descriptive level, but extended beyond identifying surface features to considering underlying causes and implications. Jihoon extended this understanding to address broader structural issues, noting that child labor involves violations of laws and rights (e.g., the Convention on the Rights of the Child) and infringes upon children’s rights to education and development. This shift suggests that what may appear as descriptive understanding can develop into structural reasoning as students make sense of the issue across different moments and representations within OMR, including videos, images, and written texts encountered at different points in the activity.

Taken together, these findings suggest that students’ civic orientations were not fixed categories but instead emerged dynamically throughout their engagement with online multimodal texts. As students interacted with videos, photographs, written descriptions, and other multimodal representations of social issues, they drew on affective responses, prior knowledge, and emerging understandings to make sense of what they encountered through various modes. Within OMR, elements of different citizenship orientations appeared as partial and shifting positions rather than stable categories. Civic sensemaking, therefore, functioned as a dynamic process through which students constructed meaning about social issues, negotiated possible responses, and at times, began to consider broader structural conditions.

4.2. Result 2: OMR Patterns and Strategies as Each Reader Engaged with Civic Sensemaking

A key pattern across participants was the reciprocal relationship between active OMR strategy use and civic sensemaking during online multimodal reading. Students’ strategic processing and civic engagement did not operate independently; rather, they appeared to mutually shape and reinforce one another throughout the reading process. Students who demonstrated more frequent use of OMR strategies tended to show more civic engagement, and those who showed more civic engagement tended to employ more OMR strategies. This extends the findings from Result 1 by showing that civic sensemaking is not only an emergent interpretive process, but also one that is actively shaped through students’ strategic engagement with multimodal texts during OMR. While we acknowledge the limitations of this small-scale case study, our analysis revealed a provisional trend suggesting that cognitive strategies and civic engagement may mutually reinforce one another during OMR for social issue learning. Their OMR reflected both cognitive and social processes, shaped by strategic meaning-making across modes as well as by civic engagement. For example, when students used multimodal integration strategies, such as integrating visuals with written words, their personally responsible citizenship (PRC) became more pronounced, illustrating how multimodal features may provoke deeper civic engagement.

Based on frequency patterns, the use of OMR strategies appeared to support civic engagement. For example, Doyoon, who used OMR strategies most frequently, also exhibited the highest frequency of civic engagement. His reading was marked by frequent integration of PRC, showing emotional reactions to multimodal content. In contrast, Minji and Sohee, who used fewer OMR strategies, demonstrated lower levels of civic engagement. Although Jihoon used strategies frequently, his civic engagement (12 times) was less frequent than Doyoon’s (45 times), yet his engagement was shaped by connections to lived experiences and selective attention to multimodal texts, along with moments of critical reflection. For example, while reading UN child rights items, Jihoon thought aloud:

…the interest of a child like me…mom and dad treat us too much like kids…Ah, we learned about human rights, we’ve learned that from social studies class…Child labor is not being protected. Article five is also correct, but it’s not being kept. I should thank my mom and dad…Rest and leisure, I can’t enjoy them these days because of academies.

His verbal protocol and screen recordings illustrate how his identity and social context shaped his civic interpretation of the text. Engagement with multimodal inputs (e.g., visuals, sound, videos) appeared to activate prior knowledge and support situation model building (Kintsch, 1998), contributing to both increased topic understanding and enriched civic engagement.

Conversely, students’ civic engagement also appeared to prompt more active and varied use of OMR strategies. For example, Minji and Doyoon, who demonstrated frequent PRC (e.g., empathy and personal connection to the text), also engaged in a wider range of OMR strategies. Minji, who frequently expressed emotional responses (e.g., gasping when viewing images of child labor), most often used multimodal integration, with six out of seven instances occurring simultaneously with affective engagement. Her verbal report illustrates this connection, “[Integrates: visual + written words on the video] (gasps) It looks dangerous”. From her retrospective interview she explained, “I looked at the photos of children working hard. I didn’t know how they work, but it made me… um… sad to know that they earn money by making stuff that we always use in our lives”.

Similarly, Doyoon used the most OMR strategies (56 times) and also demonstrated fruitful PRC (39 times) and JOC (7 times) sensemaking. As he applied prior knowledge about the issue most frequently (17 times) among the participants, his engagement further led to critical question-making strategies as he saw photos of children’s labor with written descriptions (JOC). He reported, “What’s gonna happen if countries don’t play by the rules?” as he read laws regarding child protection, and “But does her mom not work? How can you buy things with this small amount of money?” while reading written descriptions of the photo of a child working. For participatory citizenship (PC), he combined question-making, forward inference of hyperlinks, and multimodal integration strategies while saying, “Can I make a donation for them?” as he clicked a link that said ‘Protecting Working Children on Their Way to Work’. During the retrospective interview while watching this scene, he explained that he saw both photos and written words together to understand the text (

Table 3. Doyoon’s transcript.

Transcript (English Translation)	Navigational Behaviors	Cognitive Strategy	Retrospective Interview
If you say they’re pitiful, wouldn’t that hurt them even more?	[Video narration & words] “Do not exploit child labor. It needs to be eradicated. Children are pitiful.”	Prior knowledge application	I know a disabled friend, and he says if people show pity, it feels bad. So, I thought pitiful is not a good word in this case.
Isn’t that too irresponsible?	[Video narration & words] “My mom, dad, brothers, and me”
There must be some sort of school though…	[Video narration & words: “Go to school and play with friends.”]	Activating and applying prior knowledge about the topic	This video helped me resonate.
But does this Anti-Child Labor Day change anything?	Cursor on the Title & Image “June 12th, Anti-Child Labor Day”	Critical question

). “I understood the part with the picture that I couldn’t understand just with words. Also I don’t know what’s going on if I just look at pictures, but if I read words together, I can understand more”. This shows archetypal strategic OMR that was enhanced by multiple OMR strategies, which was meaningful for both multimodal and civic sensemaking.

In contrast, Sohee, who relied primarily on a linear reading of written text, exhibited fewer OMR strategies and lower levels of civic engagement, suggesting that limited engagement may constrain both comprehension and strategic processing.

Taken together, these findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between OMR strategy use and civic sensemaking, in which each process appears to reinforce the other. Students who were more civic engaged were more likely to strategically engage with multimodal texts, while strategic processing of multimodal information appeared to deepen students’ civic sensemaking of social issues. In this sense, civic sensemaking is not merely an internal interpretive process but is co-constructed through ongoing interaction with multimodal texts, where OMR strategies function as key mechanisms that activate, sustain, and deepen students’ civic interpretations. These findings highlight the importance of fostering both strategic reading and civic engagement to support meaningful learning in online multimodal environments.

5. Discussion and Implications

5.1. Rethinking OMR Civic Learning as an Interpretive Process

The findings of this study extend existing perspectives on critical civic education by demonstrating how civic learning unfolds through students’ engagement with online multimodal texts. Prior scholarship has emphasized that civic education should move beyond the transmission of knowledge to foreground how learners interpret, question, and respond to social issues in their everyday lives (Swalwell & Payne, 2019; Banks, 2017; Parker, 2003). The present findings provide empirical support for this position by showing that students’ engagement with social issues was not limited to acquiring information about child labor but involved ongoing processes of interpretation, evaluation, and meaning-making. As students navigated multimodal texts, they actively constructed understandings of social conditions and considered possible responses, illustrating how civic learning emerges through interpretive practices rather than discrete instructional outcomes.

At the same time, these findings complicate how civic engagement is often conceptualized within frameworks of democratic citizenship. Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) typology has been widely used to distinguish between personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented forms of citizenship. While this framework remains analytically useful, the findings suggest that these orientations do not necessarily function as stable or discrete categories in practice. Instead, elements of these orientations appeared fluid, partial, and overlapping within moments of interpretation. Students did not demonstrate fixed civic identities; rather, they engaged in dynamic processes of civic sensemaking in which affective responses, action-oriented thinking, and structural reasoning emerged in relation to how they interpreted multimodal information. In this sense, the findings reframe citizenship not as a set of learner attributes, but as a process enacted through meaning-making.

This perspective aligns with and extends critical approaches to civic education that position learners as capable civic thinkers. Consistent with prior research (Swalwell & Payne, 2019; Payne et al., 2025), students demonstrated the ability to engage with issues of fairness, inequality, and responsibility, even at the elementary level. However, the findings further suggest that such engagement is not best understood as movement toward a particular “type” of citizenship, such as justice-oriented citizenship. Rather, students’ responses reflected ongoing negotiation across multiple orientations, often within a single moment of engagement. This highlights the importance of viewing civic learning as a situated and evolving process rather than as a progression toward predefined civic competencies.

In addition, the findings underscore the role of literacy practices, particularly OMR, as key sites for civic learning. The C3 Framework emphasizes inquiry-based practices such as questioning, evaluating evidence, and constructing interpretations as central to civic education (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). The present study demonstrates that these practices are enacted through students’ engagement with multimodal texts, where meaning-making involves integrating visual, textual, and contextual information. As students interpreted videos, written texts, and images, they engaged in processes that closely resemble civic inquiry, including identifying problems, considering responses, and at times, examining underlying structural conditions. This suggests that online multimodal reading is not simply a literacy practice but also a critical space in which civic understanding is constructed.

Taken together, these findings contribute to ongoing discussions in critical civic education by highlighting the processual and interpretive nature of civic learning. Rather than treating civic orientations as stable endpoints, this study suggests that civic engagement emerges through students’ efforts to make sense of social issues across different modes of representation. In doing so, it underscores the need to attend not only to what students know or do, but to how they come to understand, interpret, and position themselves in relation to complex social realities.

5.2. Implications for Instruction: Civic Sensemaking and Online Multimodal Reading

A notable instructional implication from this study lies in the potential reciprocity between students’ OMR strategy use and their civic engagement. While the small-scale nature of this case study precludes generalization, the findings suggest a meaningful and theoretically relevant interplay between cognitive strategy use and sociocultural engagement during OMR. Specifically, students who demonstrated more frequent and diverse use of OMR strategies also tended to exhibit higher levels of civic engagement, particularly in the form of personal and critical connections to the text. Conversely, students who showed stronger civic engagement appeared more likely to employ a wider range of OMR strategies, suggesting that engagement may not only result from strategic OMR but also serve as a catalyst for it. This interplay aligns with perspectives that view digital reading as both a cognitive and socially situated process (Afflerbach & Cho, 2009; Coiro, 2021; Leu et al., 2013), where meaning-making is shaped through the interaction between readers’ strategic actions and their identities, emotions, and lived experiences. For instance, participants’ integration of visual and linguistic information often coincided with heightened personal responses, supporting the notion that multimodal inputs can activate prior knowledge and facilitate situation model construction (Kintsch, 1998). This is consistent with prior research demonstrating that multimodal integration enhances comprehension beyond single-mode texts (e.g., Ahn, 2023; Mayer, 2020). Importantly, this study extends such work by illustrating how multimodal processing is intertwined with students’ sociocultural engagement, particularly in civic sensemaking.

The findings suggest that multimodality functioned not merely as a characteristic of the texts students encountered, but as an active part of their meaning-making processes. Students selectively attended to videos, photographs, written descriptions, and other multimodal sources to evaluate information, construct emotional understandings, and develop civic interpretations of child labor. In several cases, students integrated information across modes to deepen their understanding of unfair labor conditions and broader structural inequalities. The findings also suggest that civic engagement itself may play a role in enhancing OMR strategy use. Students who expressed empathy, personal connections, or critical perspectives on the issue were more likely to use OMR strategies such as multimodal integration, mode evaluation, and application of prior knowledge. This finding resonates with research emphasizing the role of motivation and engagement in strategic reading (Afflerbach, 2022), and highlights the importance of sociocultural and affective dimensions in digital literacies.

Still, these interpretations should be considered in light of the study’s limitations. Given the small number of participants and the exploratory nature of the qualitative analysis, more research is needed to examine whether these patterns hold across diverse populations and contexts. Also, prior knowledge about the topic was not systematically measured, although students’ initial understandings were explored through written pre-reading knowledge reports. As a result, some of the civic interpretations and understandings demonstrated during OMR may have been partially influenced by students’ prior knowledge of child labor. Therefore, the findings should not be interpreted as representing knowledge gains resulting solely from OMR. However, the primary purpose of this study was not to measure increases in topic knowledge, but rather to examine how students engaged in civic sensemaking and strategic OMR processes while interacting with online multimodal texts. Future studies might also investigate how instructional supports can intentionally cultivate both OMR strategy use and civic engagement to enhance students’ comprehension and critical literacy in digital environments.

For digital literacy instruction, these findings suggest that instruction should not treat strategy use and civic engagement as separate domains, but rather as interconnected dimensions of OMR. Specifically, teachers can intentionally select online multimodal texts that present social issues through complementary modes (e.g., images, videos, and written texts) to support deeper meaning-making. They can also explicitly model and scaffold OMR strategies by prompting students to compare and integrate information across modes (e.g., “What does the image show that the written text does not?” or “How do the video and text together shape your understanding of the issue?”). In addition, teachers can support students’ civic sensemaking by using structured prompts that guide them from initial affective responses toward more action-oriented and structural interpretations (e.g., asking what students can do, what communities might do collectively, and what broader systems contribute to the issue). We also highlight the value of online multimodal texts in developing students’ civic engagement. Additionally, supporting students’ strategic processing without fostering civic engagement may limit deeper meaning-making, while engagement without strategic support may constrain students’ ability to critically navigate multimodal texts. Thus, fostering students’ engagement, particularly their personal, participatory, and critical connections to social issues, may be a key to supporting more effective and strategic OMR. In turn, increased strategic engagement with multimodal texts may deepen students’ understanding of complex civic issues.