‘Every Cloud has a Silver Lining’

Abstract

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, images (memes, GIFs, pictures, etc.) were largely consumed via social media. The purpose of the study is to establish a relevant research model in order to contextualize images as transmedia communicative documents during lockdowns (March-June 2020). The research method is a visual semiotic analysis used to evaluate the data for inter-coded reliability. The corpus is comprised of 300 visual representations identified regarding the salient participants metaphorically represented as “real”. On the one hand, the semantic-sensory relationships between images and viewers rhetorically imply a proverbial frame ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’; on the other hand, the persuasive concept of humour is established by multimodal tools, which further shape the audience. The salient domains of ‘staying home’ and ‘going away’ point towards more specific variables, e.g. education or tourism. The results confirm the modality judgement of humorous construct as a valuable document regarding the pandemic situation. According to its unique rhetorical features produced by the image-message-receiver relationships, the consolidation of data sets the ground for strategies and signifiers, with the function of a) presenting the adaptation of norms and b) setting the ground for consequent studies. Conclusively, the survey was conducted at Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, which confirmed students’ positive attitudes about using images for visual literacy. New findings are juxtaposed with previous knowledge in order to enforce the proposed research as a model for further narrative cognition. One such example is the burning question of how the media shapes the general public opinion on the coronavirus vaccine.