Methodological Directions for the Study of Memes

2022 ◽  
pp. 627-663
Author(s):  
Giulia Giorgi
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Actual Production ◽  
Static Images ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
The Web

The chapter proposes an empirically oriented analysis of the memetic production on Instagram. Defined as multimodal cultural artifacts, combining visual and textual material to convey humoristic messages, internet memes proliferate across the web, spawning new popular formats and layouts. However, many scholars still rely on outdated conceptualisations or limited samples for their studies. To anchor investigation on memes to the actual production, the research answers the questions: (1) Which meme formats are currently circulating online? (2) How do popular meme formats convey their message? To this end, a dataset of static images collected on Instagram was examined with qualitative visual and discourse analysis. Findings point at the possibility to adopt a bottom-up approach to recognize and classify memes, exploiting shared features of content and form. Furthermore, this categorization offers insights on the most productive mechanisms of meme production: contextually, results show a tendency towards formats that trigger identification, leveraging on relatable life situations.

Social Interaction Technologies and the Future of Blogging

2012 ◽  
pp. 249-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatyana Dumova
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Peer Production ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Future ◽  
Grassroots Initiatives ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
The Web

In an age of user-generated content, multimedia sharing sites, and customized news aggregators, an assortment of Internet-based social interaction technologies transforms the Web and its users. A quintessential embodiment of social interaction technologies, blogs are widely used by people across diverse geographies to locate information, create and share content, initiate conversations, and collaborate and interact with others in various settings. This chapter surveys the global blogosphere landscape for the latest trends and developments in order to evaluate the overall direction that blogging might take in the future. The author posits that network-based peer production and social media convergence are the driving forces behind the current transformation of blogs. The participatory and inclusive nature of social interaction technologies makes blogging a medium of choice for disseminating user-driven content and particularly suitable for bottom-up grassroots initiatives, creativity, and innovation.

scholarly journals Pop-Out: A New Cognitive Model of Visual Attention That Uses Light Level Analysis to Better Mimic the Free-Viewing Task of Static Images

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Makiese Mibulumukini
Keyword(s):  
Visual Attention ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Light Level ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Lighting Conditions ◽  
Saliency Model ◽  
Free Viewing ◽  
Static Images ◽  
Level Analysis ◽  
Better Than

Human gaze is not directed to the same part of an image when lighting conditions change. Current saliency models do not consider light level analysis during their bottom-up processes. In this paper, we introduce a new saliency model which better mimics physiological and psychological processes of our visual attention in case of free-viewing task (bottom-up process). This model analyzes lighting conditions with the aim of giving different weights to color wavelengths. The resulting saliency measure performs better than a lot of popular cognitive approaches.

scholarly journals Humor, ideologia e discurso: a circulação dos estereótipos do caipira em piadas na internet

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-47
Author(s):  
Emanuel Angelo Nascimento
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Electronic Discourse ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Production Conditions ◽  
The Web ◽  
The Way

RESUMO:Inscrito na Análise do Discurso (AD) de linha francesa, este artigo tem por objetivo discutir o funcionamento do discurso do humor relacionado à circulação dos estereótipos do caipira na internet. O corpus é constituído de um conjunto de piadas publicadas no portal Humortardela e no site AnimaTunes, a partir do qual analisamos, com base nos estudos de Possenti (1998, 2010), as condições de produção do discurso do humor. Para análise desse objeto de estudo no espaço digital, leva-se em conta a noção de discurso eletrônico, a partir de Orlandi (2013), além dos estudos de Bergson (2007), Raskin (1985) e Skinner (2002) sobre o riso e o humor. Mobiliza-se, ainda, os conceitos de cenas de enunciação, desenvolvidos por Maingueneau (2008), e de estereótipos, a partir de Amossy & Hershberg Pierrot (1997), a fim de compreender como as representações do caipira emergem nos processos de enunciação humorística. A partir dos resultados das análises, pretende-se verificar como as representações do caipira são interpeladas no interdiscurso e de que forma a internet contribui para a circulação dos estereótipos do caipira na rede em sua relação com o humor.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: estereótipo; caipira; internet;discurso; humor. ABSTRACT: Based on the Discourse Analysis (AD) of French orientation, this article aims at discussing the functioning of the humor discourse associated with the circulation of the stereotypes of the Brazilian caipira on the internet. Thecorpus comprises a set of jokes published on the portal Humortardela and on the website AnimaTunes, from which we analyze, based on studies of Possenti (1998, 2010), the production conditions of the humor discourse. For the analysis of this object of study on the digital environment, we take into account the notion of electronic discourse, from Orlandi (2013), as well as the studies of Bergson (2007), Raskin (1985), Skinner (2002) about laughter and humor. We also put together the concepts of scenes of enunciation, developed by Maingueneau (2008), and stereotypes, of Amossy & Hershberg Pierrot (1997), in order to understand how the representations of the caipira emerge in the processes of humor enunciation. From the analysis results, we intend to verify the way the representations of the caipira are challenged in interdiscourse and how the internet contributes for the circulation of the caipira stereotypes on the web in its relation with humor. KEYWORDS: stereotype; caipira; internet; discourse; humor.

scholarly journals Indonesian Tourism Discourse on www.indonesia.travel: Mood Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Arina Isti'anah
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Interpersonal Relationship ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Analysis Approach ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Information Goods ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Web

Tourism is an important topic to observe since it affects a country’s economic vibrancy and global image. Scholars have researched the tourism website's lexical and visual features, yet none observed how the website builds an interpersonal relationship to the browsers. Thus, this paper sheds light on how Indonesian tourism website exchanges information, goods, and services to the browsers. Two problems are addressed in this paper: (1) how are the mood structures employed on the Indonesian tourism website? (2) what are tourism discourses revealed on the web? To answer them, ten sample articles of Medan, Raja Ampat, Bali, Banyuwangi, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung, Makassar, Lombok, and Wakatobi highlighted on the front page of the website, accessed on www.indonesia.travel, were analyzed through Discourse Analysis approach. The 461 collected clauses were categorized into the mood structures and their speech functions. The results showed that the website was dominated by declarative mood functioning as statements, seen in 328 clauses, or 71.6% of the total clauses. It implied that promotion was not thoroughly involved, proven by the limited number of the speech function “offer”. The website's mood structures aimed to present itineraries and access, a place to play, and authenticity. Aside from culinary and cultural heritage, the website also presented traditional transportation and game as Indonesian authenticity. The commodity given on the website was in the form of information to help the prospective tourists prepare for their trip to Indonesia.

scholarly journals Realization of «Victory» and «Defeat» frames in sports Internet-discourse: problem of focusing

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-135
Author(s):  
A. G. Pisareva
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Sport Teams ◽  
Event Model ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods ◽  
The Web ◽  
Cognitive Event

The relevance of the problem of realization of the frames Victory and Defeat that are linguistically represented in the sports Internet-discourse is due to the fact that in the recent decades scholars both in Russia and abroad develop the theoretical grounds of discourse analysis and pay special attention to different kinds of institutional and professional discourses, and sports discourse possesses two important features aims and participants; thus, sports discourse belongs to the group of institutional discourses and is of great interest for researchers. The aim of the research became the identification of methods that are applied in order to change the focus of the frame; in the course of the study the author solves the following tasks: description of the constituents of the cognitive event model, carrying out linguistic research of sports Internet-discourse fragments and defining the pragmatic goals of the author that in turn influence the frame as a whole. The match reports which are found in the news sections of sport teams` websites were used as the research materials. The study is devoted to the headings of the reports and introductions to them. It is these parts of the articles that contain information about the match outcome that is the basis for the frames under analysis. In the article the following methods were applied: critical discourse analysis as well as quantitative and qualitative methods in the framework of content analysis. Lexical units that were singled out were analyzed from both morphological and semantic perspectives. The study of modern sports Internet-discourse has demonstrated that the authors of match reports tend not only to convey the information about the match results to the readers of the web-site but also to influence their opinion by forming a particular interpretation. The conducted analysis makes it possible to conclude that an intentional shift of focus frame is achieved with the help of various lexical units, word combinations and, especially, evaluative adjectives.

COVID-19 and viral anti-Asian racism: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of memes and the racialization of the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Yan Wu ◽  
Matthew Wall
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Bottom Up

This article examines how internet memes both enacted and reproduced racialization of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were motivated to undertake this work by a surge in hatred towards and violence against people with East Asian heritage following the outbreak of COVID-19. We focus on memes because of their ubiquity in contemporary culture and their capacity to both reflect and shape discourses. We conduct a multimodal critical discourse analysis of two prominent memes – juxtaposing a ‘top-down’ process of meme selection and distribution (the sharing of ‘The Kung-Flu Kid’ meme on Instagram by Donald Trump Jr) with a ‘bottom-up’ process (the ‘Corona-chan’ meme that originated on the website 4chan). We situate our study in a growing literature on politicized memes, challenging an emerging consensus that lauds ‘bottom-up’ memes as a democratizing force enabling resistance to hegemony, inequality and injustice. While we do not reject this characterization outright, we add nuance, showing that racialized memetic discourses around COVID-19 were propagated both from the top-down and from the bottom-up. We conclude that memes are particularly powerful communicative tools in racialized discourse because their use of polysemy, humour and cultural reference allows them to subvert the mechanisms that sanction openly racist statements.

scholarly journals Website hierarchy and the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design: A systemic functional hypermedia discourse analysis perspective

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilia Djonov
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Hierarchical Organization ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
Content Organization ◽  
User Orientation ◽  
The Web

Website hierarchy is a central principle for organizing information in websites with implications for user orientation on the Web. Employing websites for children as case studies, this paper proposes a conceptualization of website hierarchy developed by adapting a tool from systemic functional linguistics to the analysis of websites. This new conceptualization draws on the strengths and reconciles the differences of existing ones in order to reflect the fluidity of websites as hypermedia texts on the WWW and the role that the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design plays in revealing a website's hierarchical organization and thereby orienting users within it.

Smart Technologies, E-Participation, and the ‘Right to the Territory'

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-214
Author(s):  
Teresa Graziano
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Online Activism ◽  
Smart Technologies ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Web

The chapter is finalized to scrutinize the capacity of netizens' e-participation and/or online activism to effectively influence territorial governance, by analyzing the role and the relevance of the Web in shaping new and variegated forms of “social movements” both in urban and in rural/marginal contexts trough a comparative analysis of four case studies in Italy. The main aim is to critically rethink - conceptually and politically - the intersection among sustainability, smart technologies, local communities, and the “right to the territory”, to provide new theoretical insights about bottom-up and “participative” concepts of smartness.

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