On March 13 at 13:00, we invite you to participate in the online research seminar "Internet Memes as Multimodal Analogies: Analogical Thinking and Participatory History in the subreddit r/HistoryMemes", hosted by Robbert-Jan Adriaansen, endowed professor at Ghent University and associate professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Duration: 1.5 hours.
Abstract
The digitalization of human communication has a major impact on how societies engage with the past. New media and communication platforms not only change how we share and consume information about the past but also how we interpret it and give it meaning. Social media enable new forms of historical representation, for example through the multimodal use of image, text, and audio, but also impose limitations and thus guide forms of historical thinking.
This seminar specifically addresses the role of internet memes as a new form of historical representation. Using innovative digital methods for image-text analysis, we will discuss how memes on the popular platform Reddit facilitate analogical reasoning and function as “multimodal historical analogies”. Drawing on D. Gentner‘s structure-mapping theory, we will analyze how meme image templates provide familiar base systems that enable complex analogies by mapping them to different historical contexts.
Speaker bio
Robbert-Jan Adriaansen is endowed professor at Ghent University (Belgium) where he holds the EuroClio chair Historical Culture in Transition, and is associate professor at the History Department at Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands). He is co-lead of the Heritage & Identity research cluster and executive director of the Center for Historical Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has published widely on historical culture and memory culture, specifically on the impact of digitization on historical understanding and learning.
Organisation
This research seminar is part of the spring 2025 seminar series of the Department of Digital Cultures and Communication, Faculty of Communication, Vilnius University, organised by the Connective Research Group, and moderated by Prof. Costis (Konstantinos) Dallas. For further information contact .
Please register HERE.