Multimodal viral communication: a social semiotic analysis of the popular Spanish "Ola ke ase" meme

Multimodality – the interdependence of semiotic resources in text – is an existential element of today’s media. The term multimodality attends systematically to the social interpretation of a wide range of communicational forms used in meaning making. A primary focus of social- semiotic multimodal analysis is on mapping how modal resources are used by people in a given social context. In November 2012 the “Ola ke ase” catchphrase, which is a play on “Hola ¿qué hace?”, appeared for the first time in Spain and immediately has been adopted as a Twitter hashtag and an image macro series. Its viral spread on social networks has been tremendous, being a trending topic in various Spanish-speaking countries. The objective of analysis is how language and image work together in the “Ola ke ase” meme. The interplay between text and image in one of the original memes and some of its variations is quantitatively analysed applying a social-semiotic approach. Results demonstrate how the “Ola ke ase” meme functions through its multimodal character and the non-standard orthography. The spread of uncountable variations of the meme shows the social process that goes on in the meaning making of the semiotic elements.

Insights to Indigenous Media and collaborative Video Work

Indigenous media as a phenomenon cannot be reduced to a reaction to western hegemony and colonial legacies, but is often rooted in the context of resistance, empowerment, self-determination and the reclaiming of symbolic representation. Therefore I would like to reflect on different cases of indigenous film and participatory video work in an attempt to highlight the multiple dynamics that arise due to the desideratum of self-representation and to finally locate us as anthropologists in that context.

Tattoo: a multifaceted medium of communication

This article suggests the systems theoretical distinction of form/medium as a useful tool for distinguishing social phenomena that might look as if they stem from the same process. This is shown to be the case for the tattoo and tattooing. The tattoo is conceived as a medium of communication through which different forms of communication emerge. Tattooing is one of these forms of communication that shapes the medium in a particular way. The current article sheds a special light on its intricate, communicational constellation, for which the concept of parallax is suggested. Law, medicine and cosmetics as other forms of communication use the medium of tattoo in their own way as well. The form/medium distinction allows us to grasp these different forms of communication, while it shows that they share the tattoo as medium. The article’s ultimate goal is to illustrate that the tattoo figures as a multifaceted medium of communication.