There are 5 clues in the grid that contain either the word "dot" or "dash", namely: MAD, ODOMETER, RAN, STACCATO, and EYES. When their first letters are taken in grid order, they spell out the word MORSE (aka. DOTSANDDASHES)
Turning the puzzle 90 degrees ccw results in exactly 5 rows at the top and 5 at the bottom with at least one O or —, which form the name ERNIE IORAY. Google turned up no results, so I gave up and just tried MORSE since it was a relevant 5 letter word.
Welp. We all get there in our own ways :) (Coincidentally, I thought of that as a potential mechanism but couldn't be bothered to construct a grid with such specifications)
OK so there are some clues in the middle with unique patterns of O and I: TOOKIN, ASIMO, IONIAN. I thought to go line by line and interpret any O as a dit and I as a dah, but that just produced random letters.Then I thought to turn the puzzle 90 degrees to turn every I into a —.
Didn’t figure out the meta, but this was cool! I’m not good at metas and so I just wanted to reveal this one and study it to figure out how to approach metas in the future. Fun one!