Exploring Visual Culture of COVID-19 Memes: Russian and Chinese Perspectives
Exploring Visual Culture of COVID-19 Memes: Russian and Chinese Perspectives
Author(s): Olga Smirnova, Alexander Lobodanov, Galina V. Denissova, Anna A. Gladkova, Olga V. Sapunova, Anastasia L. SvitichSubject(s): Social Sciences, Media studies, Communication studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
Keywords: visual language;ethnic and cultural peculiarities;Chinese;Russian;cultural paradigm;digital memes;COVID-19;
Summary/Abstract: The article explores COVID-19 related Internet memes and treats them as samples of creolized text in a study of the way ethnic and cultural peculiarities of memes are perceived by representatives of two radically different cultural paradigms: the Russians and Chinese. A survey is used as a method of the investigation. Russian and Chinese students, and visual arts experts evaluated Russian and Chinese COVID-19 memes according to several criteria concerning their content, verbal constituent element and visual characteristics. The study concluded that the social and culture-specific components mostly contribute to forming the opinion of the meme and its appreciation. Awareness of both the cultural background and the current social and nation-specific situation is required to decode a full amount of information contained in a meme. Equally important is the visual component in understanding the meme. Thus, the study contributes not only to studying event-specific memes but also broadens the scope of research on memes as a sample of visual culture.
Journal: Central European Journal of Communication
- Issue Year: 14/2021
- Issue No: 29
- Page Range: 259-286
- Page Count: 28
- Language: English