Sticky voices: Affect and critical digital literacies in multimodal academic feedback

This paper presents a qualitative, critical case study that examines multimodal academic feedback through the theoretical lens of affect and critical digital literacy. It pursues two aims: first, to explore how simple technologies such as screencast feedback provide multisemiotic cues that enhance the accessibility and inclusivity of academic feedback in an increasingly digitized educational landscape; second, to extend prior research by demonstrating how an affective-discursive lens can offer deeper insights into students’ experiences of feedback and its potential for transformative learning. Drawing on critical affect theory and critical digital literacy frameworks, the study analyzes a corpus of teacher-recorded feedback videos and accompanying student group reflections. The findings reveal that multimodal feedback provides rich semiotic resources that help students interpret not only the content but also the tone and relational intent behind the feedback. These affective responses often foster a different more active engagement with future academic tasks, including moments of dialogicality and inner speech that support self-regulation. Furthermore, the availability and accessibility of video feedback afford opportunities for affective resonance and long-term learning trajectories. These outcomes call attention to the sociotechnical and ideological structures under which feedback is produced and received, raising important questions about equity, authority, and the literacies that shape academic practices.