Internet memes as a multimodal resource for communicating disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aslan, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4174-5493 (2024) Internet memes as a multimodal resource for communicating disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In: The Routledge handbook of language and health communication, second edition. Routledge. (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic was not only a global public health crisis, but it also served as a catalyst in aggravating prevailing social, economic, and health disparities in society. Drawing on critical multimodal discourse analysis, this chapter focuses on the disparity discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US as reflected in internet memes. The memes analysed illustrate disparities in resource allocation and treatment of different healthcare issues, highlighting stark contrasts between privileged and vulnerable social actors in the pandemic arena. The chapter underscores the power of internet memes a productive digital genre to understand ordinary citizens’ understanding of inequality and disparity in healthcare and crisis management.

Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/121794
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
Publisher	Routledge
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