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A Multimodal Analysis of Political Satire: Webcomics and GIFs in Post-Arab Spring Egypt

Category
Multimodality
Date
Date
Monday 19 March 2018
Michael Sadler SR 3.40 12-1pm

Hanem El-Farahaty - CTS and AIMES

The Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and the protests known as ‘the Arab Spring’ resulted in an increase in the number of cartoonists and amateurs who use specialist software to digitally mix modes for novel sign-making (Lankshear and Knobel, 2008; Gursimesk, 2016). These people draw creative forms of satire including but not limited to political webcomics and Graphics Interchange Formats (GIFs) which exist alongside political cartoons.

This paper offers a multimodal investigation of political webcomics and GIFs published by cartoonists and amateurs on Facebook. It will briefly discuss the difficulties of translating political webcomics and GIFs into English. Drawing on Serafini’s (2010) tripartite framework of perception, structure and ideology, the paper will analyse the role each of these perspectives play in widening readers’ perceptions and interpretations of the message. With this aim in mind, Kress’ and van Leeuwen’s (2006) elements of visual design and Kress’ (2010) multimodal social semiotic approach will be used to discuss the multifaceted modes contributing to the expression of young people’s political message and the implications of these multimodal aspects on translating the above two forms of political satire. The analysis will also be informed by interviews with Makhlouf, cartoonist at Almasry Alyoum newspaper, with Islam Gawish, webcomic writer and author of Alwarka/The Paper, and with Shady Sedky, co-founder of the GIFs Facebook page Asa7be Sarcasm Society.