Reactions to Brexit in images: a multimodal content analysis of shared visual content on Flickr

Abstract

In this article, the authors analyze citizens’ reactions to Brexit on social media after the referendum results by performing a content analysis of 5877 posts collected from the social media platform Flickr, written in English, German, French, Spanish or Italian. Their research aims to answer the three following questions: What multimodal practices are adopted by citizens when they react to societal events like Brexit? To what extent do these practices illustrate types of citizenship that are specific to social networks? Can we observe different reactions to Brexit according to the languages used by the citizens? The authors focus on the types of visual content the citizens used to react to Brexit, as well as on what types of social relations this content can particularly create between their authors and the other members of the Flick community. Their article also highlights to what extent these posts shared on Flickr show content that is in favour of, or against, Brexit.

Sustainability data distortions: the use of visual impression management techniques in corporate sustainability reporting

“…Multimodal content analysis delves into the organized examination and understanding of materials presented through diverse channels or mediums, recognizing the “multimodal” nature of such content, communication extends beyond just textual means and can encompass visuals, audio, body language, spatial layouts and other signifying elements. In the realm of digital media, examples include videos, which merge imagery, audio and occasionally text and websites that intertwine graphics, written content, video clips and interactive components (Bouko et al. , 2021).…”

Emotions through texts and images

“…Previous research (Bouko et al 2018), in which we coded the types of images 1 in a corpus of Brexit-related Flickr posts, revealed that 12% of the visual content falls within the category of visual symbols and tropes. We also coded these posts according to five categories of interpersonal functions.…”

“…In previous research (Bouko et al 2018), we collected all the English language posts containing "Brexit" in the text or as tag published on Flickr between June 24 (the day of the announcement of the referendum results) and July 23 2016. All posts were anonymized.…”

“…As mentioned in the literature review, this research is based on previous research. In Bouko et al 2018, we determined whether the visual content of the post contained visual symbols and/or tropes. We noticed that most of these posts are composed of one central element, a "nucleus", and sometimes of subordinate units, namely "satellites" (Mann and Thompson 1988).…”

‘Nigeria is fighting Covid-419’: A multimodal critical discourse analysis of political protest in Nigerian coronavirus-related internet memes

“…One way in which political protest has been carried out is with the use of internet memes, which are groups of digital items which share common features such as content, form and/or stance, and are ‘circulated, imitated, and transformed via the internet by multiple users’ (Shifman, 2014: 341). Internet memes have been used for different political functions including election campaign tools (Adegoju and Oyebode, 2015; Moody-Ramirez and Church, 2019; Piata, 2016), and political participation (Bouko et al, 2018; Milner, 2012; Ross and Rivers, 2017). The few studies that examine memes as tools for political protest have only considered the use of rhetorical strategies such as metaphor and synecdoche in US-based internet memes (see Huntington, 2016) or how dissent is negotiated and mitigated in Omani WhatsApp memes (Zidjaly, 2017), without examining political protest in the memes from a multimodal critical discourse analytic perspective, especially during a pandemic in Nigeria.…”