Covid-19 WhatsApp sticker memes as public signs in Oman (original) (raw)
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Memes as reasonably hostile laments: A discourse analysis of political dissent in Oman
Discourse & Society , 2017
In this article, I investigate how political dissent is linguistically constructed and mitigated in memes that are circulated nationally on WhatsApp in Oman. I do so by drawing upon insights from relational approaches to face, the theorization of communicative strategies as polysemous and ambiguous, and research pertaining to the Islamic practice of lamenting. The data consist of a representative set of memes collected in the summer and fall of 2015 as part of an ethnographic project on social media and Arab identity. I theorize memes as cultural tools that take the form of 'reasonably hostile' lament-narratives, which enable citizens in Oman to engage in democracy while saving face. To create lament-memes that voice dissent while mitigating face-attacks, Omanis draw upon various communicative strategies: They use repetition, code choice, hashtags, and different genres; they juxtapose emojis with text; and they manipulate the production and participation frameworks of texts. Collectively, these strategies, which function via intertextuality, allow the concerns to be aired, but indirectly and playfully. The article demonstrates how political dissent is negotiated and mitigated through memes, the agency of social media users, and the validity of conceptualizing memes as cultural tools.
CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo, 2022
Semiotics is the study of signs. It is the science that deals with the signs whether such signs are visual or written. In other words, semiotics not only analyzes the visual text or discourse but also it analyzes the written and spoken elements and messages of texts. As an analytical framework, it can be used in all types of human endeavors such as politics, religion, history, medicine, cinema, painting, theatre, architecture, and dance (Juliantari, 2014; Dağlı & Hacıbektaşoğlu, 2015). Visual communication is more direct and straightforward in its meaning than written texts. In other words, images and other visual signs can clearly and quickly convey different messages and ideologies. Semiotics serves as a powerful tool for uncovering such hidden messages and ideologies. Werner (2004) describes our current world as being characterized by its "relentless traffic in images (64)". In fact, our planet is full of images that convey different messages. In the late December of 2019, an unknown disease emerged in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Then, the disease has spread widely to reach almost all countries in the planet. The unknown and mysterious disease was called as (nCoV). The disease was given another name as severe acute Contents lists available at www.gsjpublications.com
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AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
It was late February 2020 when part of Northern Italy entered the first Covid-19 lockdown of the West. While stories of people fleeing quarantined areas soon made national headlines, the international news was suddenly reporting of coronavirus patients connected to Italy all around the world. Against this background, Italian social media started thriving with Covid-19 humour. On 9 March the lockdown turned nationwide and became one of the strictest in Europe. By focusing on Covid-19 memes of quarantined Italy, this article explores the local - and mundane - appropriation of memetic practices, in both its cultural and political dimensions. We combined digital methods and netnographic techniques to generate and analyse a dataset of Covid-19 Twitter memes produced by Italian publics during the first national lockdown. This allowed us to follow the circulation - and evolution - of memetic practices, explore how cultural fabric contributed to different dimensions of meme production and c...
The European Journal of Humour Research 10 (3) 189–210, 2022
The analysis of memes posted on Moroccan Facebook pages during the first wave of Covid-19 pandemic shows that the use of humour by Moroccans is not only motivated by achieving mirth but it also vehicles critical views about issues of common concern debated in the digital public sphere. Some of these memes were used to cope with fear and uncertainty. However, most memes harboured mixed feelings about the situation and were used for social control and the expression of conflict and resistance, addressing issues of behaviour, governance and communication. This article uses a social semiotic approach to analyse the collected memes (460 from personal and communal pages) as a multimodal discourse in terms of context, culture, and media affordances. This article contends that the study of these memes can be a key to understanding how Moroccans used humour to cope with danger and radical uncertainty, build identification and strengthen social cohesion. It also highlights the polyvocality of humour in times of the pandemic and the gradual shift from inclusive, conformist and sympathetic humour to disparaging, exclusive and challenging humour as the pandemic lingered, consensus began to crack, social control was challenged and injunctive norms were replaced by survival values. The results show how these memes are indicative of the way humour changes mechanisms and functions in terms of contingent motivations.
Horizons of the future: Anthropological and other scientific approaches (pp. 71-98). Belgrade: Archives of Vojvodina, Institute of Ethnography of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts., 2023
The aim of the paper is twofold: on the one hand methodological issues in digital folkloristic and anthropological research will be discussed by using the example of memes regarding the Covid-19 pandemic that circulated on Greek social media. The goal, thus, is to demonstrate the methodology used in the study of pandemic memes, its limitations, but, also, its peculiarities arising from the field in which it was conducted. On the other hand, by undertaking interpretive analysis, as well as the perception and dissemination by Greek internet users, the paper intends to highlight the impact of the pandemic on people“s lives as conveyed through memes. Comments and related posts will be analysed to determine how well memes are received by internet users. The study questions concern aspects of this new experience, the pandemic, and the way internet users respond to them in relation to memes.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2019
The political discourse of protesting which comprises carrying signs for clarifying demands and expressing feelings constitutes a significant area of study in the signs of online platforms within the linguistic landscape field. Taking as a case in point the Jordanian protest on May 30, 2018, a few examples of the signs of protest are analyzed using some aspects of visual semiotics, particularly the code choice. The study is grounded on both quantitative and qualitative data culled from online sources. The analysis of the data finds a variety of linguistic codes used in attaining different readerships: the standard form of Arabic as the official language in the country and in other Arab countries; Jordanian Arabic investigated as the device of speaking out the voice of the local audience; English viewed as the language of addressing the global audience; and the multilingualism occurrence as a significant feature in the corpus for achieving further readerships. These codes are largely...
Ideology and Intertextuality in Covid-19 Memes, 2022
The paper analyses the way in which Covid-19 memes were created during the first wave of the pandemic, paying particular attention to the intertextual links employed and to the ideology that is being put forward through those pieces of digital humour. The corpus for this analysis comprises 180 memes circulated on Facebook and Instagram in the period 13 March 2020 30 May 2020. The memes were first thematically categorized into several groups and the specifics of each group were reviewed. As people experienced more or less similar feelings when placed in isolation/under quarantine, these states are considered universal, and this particular study focuses on a sample of 54 quarantine/isolation-related memes circulated in the social media during the first wave of the pandemic. Using CDA and Multimodal Discourse Analysis the paper presents the main trends in their creation along with the established intertextual links and the ideas transmitted. Some of the conclusions reached are that memes employing images of celebrities or popular characters, be they international or local, are easier to decode, while the resort to culture-specific codes and images from movies might prove challenging and, to a big extent, depends on the background knowledge and interests of the recipients.
The Speech Act of English and Arabic Racial Memes of Covid19
International Journal of Linguistics, 2023
A meme is a caption image that consists of an image and a witty message which reflects worldwide current incidents. Since the outbreak, Covid19 has received its own share of memes by fueling a pileon excuses to promote racism on Asian's and particularly the Chinese community as being the major cause of the pandemic. The present study aims to investigate racial memes of (24) English memes and (10) Arabic memes. To achieve this, a pragmatic multimodal approach has been adopted to find answers to the following questions: 1-To what category does the speech act "racialize" belong to? 2-Are racial intentions expressed equally in English and Arabic memes? 3-Is there any difference in the frequency of racial humor in English and Arabic memes? 4-Which category of textimage combination is more frequently used in English and Arabic memes? The findings of the study, show that the speech act of racialize belongs to expressive illocutionary acts since it expresses a negative psychological state of mind and has down face since it is not accepted by everyone. Although, Covid19 memes in English and Arabic sometimes share the same caption and image but the racial intention in English memes are reflected through dark humor unlike Arabic memes which are mostly humorous.
Pragma-multimodal functions of Covid-19 memes in Nigerian context
2021
Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) is a scourge whose impact has been felt across the world. Since its emergence in the global space, scholars and researchers have started examining it from different perspectives. This study is a linguistic approach to the discourse of Covid-19. In particular, the study investigates the pragma-multimodal functions of memes created and shared by Nigerians on different social media platforms in reaction to the pandemic. Data comprised ten memes sampled from the numerous memes initially gathered. Data were subjected to pragmatic and multimodal analyses, with reference to Mey's (2001) pragmatic act theory and Kress' (2010) multimodality. Findings reveal texts and images in the memes combine with the prevailing sociopolitical and religious contexts in Nigeria to evoke the practs of warning,
Lukas R.A. Wilde Sachs and Klaus Sachs-Hombach (eds.): The Semiotics of Emoji and Digital Stickers
IMAGE: THE INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF IMAGE SCIENCES, 38(2) , 2023
Every day, billions of emoji are sent via mobile devices and chat programs, messengers, and emails. The worldwide emoji standardization – established in 2010 by the California-based Unicode Consortium – was aimed at overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers through a new digital form of pictograms and ideograms. Certainly, much has been written on the various linguistic functions of emoji ever since. Going beyond notions of static codes or fixed grammars, this special issue of IMAGE approaches emoji and digital stickers from the perspective of everyday communication and mediation. It is based on the panel »Emoji and Digital Stickers: Affective Labor and Lifeworld Mediation« held during the 15th World Congress of Semiotics (IASS/AIS), »Semiotics in the Lifeworld«, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) on August 31, 2022. Apart from some of the presenters, additional contributors have been sought to represent better at least a part of current approaches to emoji research at the intersection of semiotics, linguistics, and media studies. Emoji seem especially suited to such a multi-disciplinary approach: As (partly) pictogrammatic signs, they can be investigated as a (special, quite peculiar) forms of pictoriality just as well as an innovation within digital writing modifying and enhancing our linguistic means of expressions.