This is a photo of a stop sign. It was taken in Denver, Colorado but underneath it there’s an extra sign, an annotation, giving us a reminder that this block of the city used to belong to Denver’s indigenous communities. Dr. Remi Kalir uses this as an example of social annotation- a physical reminder or contribution to a larger subject that can interact with other opinions and messages to lead to a greater, central consensus.

In our everyday lives, we use annotation all the time, since it can be used for almost anything you set your mind to. It can be used to grade a final essay from a university student, modify a recipe in a cookbook for dietary restrictions, or create a long-lasting message that’s instantly recognizable from first glance.

left: Graffiti on remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall that used to divide east and west Germany. right: a former US confederate monument decorated with graffiti and a projections related to the Black Lives Matter movement. The monument eventually was taken down as a result of its social annotation.

The evidence of annotation persists as a digital image, and one that we cannot forget.

Dr. Remi Kalir

Annotation, more specifically, social annotation that Dr. Kalir talks about in his lecture, can be used to create reminders of political actions tied to history- but it can also create meaningful discussions using the collective effort of those annotations. Take the photo shown below, for example.


When this photo was taken in the summer of 2020, it was the height of both the COVID pandemic and police brutality towards black Americans. The signs were placed on a temporary wall that was erected around the White House at the time of nationwide BLM protests, with each sign, or ‘annotation’ displaying a collective, and meaningful discussion toward injustice against America’s black population.

Dr. Kalir showcases that the signs here are intertextual, and can both non-verbally interact with each other, and create counternarratives, such as the examples of responses to injustice in the United States.

Which leads us to social annotation. Instead of using annotation to critique a problem that’s yet to be solved, social annotation helps to collaboratively construct knowledge. In medieval times, scribes would make copies of manuscripts, (since publishing hadn’t caught on yet) and would often include drawings of hand gestures, equivalent to highlighting what they wanted the viewer to see the most. Dr. Kalir likens this type of annotation as a literal form of digital media.

Using a mix of social and digital annotations, individual members of study groups can contribute pieces of their annotations and opinions to a larger discussion. There’s already digital tools that can aid in annotation groups, like Hypothes.is, or Perusal- which have been used in all types of learning environments, from K-12 to post-secondary. By using these methods and tools, we can see a diverse set of opinions and knowledge that contribute to a great consensus, and allows us to learn together. (for example, analyzing public domain texts like the works of Jane Austen.)

I found the topics that were discussed by Dr. Kalir fascinating- I never thought before that a collection of opinions that were shown through annotations could work as a collaborative message, rather than a set of individual ones. I’ll try out some of the methods in this lecture for myself, and see how it goes.

below: a collection of screenshots from Dr. Kalim’s lecture that detail the methods of social annotation.