Visual Elements and Memes in Social Media in the Era of Crisis and War Communications

Monday, 7 July 2025: 11:00-12:45
Location: SJES021 (Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences (JES))
RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (host committee)

Language: English and French

Since ancient times, conflicts and wars have regularly been depicted in iconic forms. Advances in photography and the emergence of moving images, first in the cinema and then on television, have made the realities of conflict even more pervasive.

The journalistic mediation of traditional media has also been overturned by secure messaging platforms, whose distribution channels bring together large user bases. As a result, communities have a space in which members can read, interact or participate using messages composed of text, still and moving images and audio files. In this way, crises and wars are constructed into a narrative that the individual relates and communicates in real time, participating in a disintermediated communication space by exploiting self-representation and direct expression.

Faced with the emergence of a new visual communication of war, we need to consider the issues they represent, particularly in the collective imagination and in the construction of national narratives and identity. We propose to study the evolution of new visual elements on digital platforms of social media during social crises and wars, in particular, humorous war memes, photos and videos followed by short texts. Mainly conceived with a humorous and/or ironic, affective or tragic purpose, these new visual elements are not simply objects of representation; on the contrary, they function as formidable political components, as a means of propaganda, as well as elements of a collective unconscious, new national myths or constituents of a new identity.

Session Organizer:
Oksana LYCHKOVSKA-NEBOT, Odessa National I.I. Mechnikov University, Professor Associated, Ukraine
Chair:
Omar CERRILLO, ITESM, Mexico
Oral Presentations
Ukrainian War Memes: Between "Folk Tales" and New Practices of Identity
Oksana LYCHKOVSKA-NEBOT, Odessa National I.I. Mechnikov University, Professor Associated, Ukraine
Visualisation of the Living Environment’S Destruction / Recovery in the Wartime Ukraine
Nataliia KOSTENKO, Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine; Liudmyla SKOKOVA, Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
Trans Afrikan Together: Protest, Visibility, and Voice in the Digital Diaspora
B CAMMINGA, African Centre for Migration & Society, South Africa
Swifties in India: Understanding Affinity, Self, and Global Media Power
Yamini Krishna CHINTAMANI, FLAME University, India
Education, Information, and Social Justice. Issues and Perspectives
Raffaella FRASCARELLI, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy