Journals like "entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography," led by Nolas and Varvantakis, show a strong dedication to exploring all the different sides of multimodal research, encouraging scholars to think differently and embrace the rich experiences of studying people and cultures.
Anthropologists have been experimenting with different forms media technologies throughout the twentieth century whenever confronted with the limitation of text-based ethnography.
Multimodal is a term that has readily been used since the 1970s in varied disciplines as psychotherapy, phonetics, genetics, literature and medicine to characterize different approaches to carrying out scientific research that involves to a certain degree, thinking outside of the box.
Building in this legacy, multimodal anthropology seeks to expand the boundaries of visual anthropology to incorporate emerging technologies of twenty-first century including mobile networking, social media, geo-mapping, virtual reality, podcasting, interactive design, along with other traditional forms of learning and knowledge production like art and drawing that were often sidelined within visual anthropology, such as interactive gaming, theatre, performance, graphic novels, ethnofiction and experimental ethnography.
The analytical approaches of the social sciences tend towards the creation of order out of complexity asking us to categorise and organise our experiences and data in issues, themes, narratives and discourses.