Schedule 75. StuTS

In this talk we will offer a multimodal analysis of memes which depict situations in which various aspects of the PhD journey are contrasted, selected from three popular Instagram pages with over 100k followers – phdhelp, phd_meme_page and thedissertationcoach, whose purpose is to offer their followers, as their title or the description of the account show – help, support, coaching by publishing useful, creative and humorous content and enabling their PhD student followers to academically grow, but also to interact with others who have been in similar situations and thus collectively cope with the stressful aspects of PhD studies by turning to humourous memes which represent experiences, expectations, accomplishments and disappointments during the PhD journey.
Because doing a PhD is a long-term commitment during which various new discoveries, progress, as well as setbacks are to be expected, both in terms of scientific research and personal development, we are interested in exploring which of these aspects are represented as contrasts (e.g. expectations vs. reality of article writing) depicted through the meme type called image macros. We therefore aim to establish which topics/parts of the PhD journey these image macros cover, which kinds of contrasts are created, both linguistically and visually, how these two semiotic domains interact in conveying a message, whether it is predominantly focused on positive or negative aspects of the studies, as well as to determine the sources of humor. The analysis of perceived contrasts will give us insights into how PhD students situate themselves academically and socially and what place the PhD studies occupy in their lives.

Key words: internet memes, PhD memes, content analysis, multimodality, humor, image macros, contrasts

Info

Day: 2024-05-09
Start time: 14:45
Duration: 00:30
Room: Squid (33.0.008)
Track: Diverse
Language: en

Links:

• iCalendar

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