GIFs as floating signifiers

This paper investigates GIFs that use famous paintings and art collages in order to discern if their possible interpretations justify the label of ‘floating signifiers’. For this purpose, I explain what ‘floating signifier’ means and describe what happened with the term when it was correlated with the issues of information and digital materiality. Thus, in new media, the parallel term for ‘floating signifier’ is Hayles’s ‘flickering signifier’. In a subtle manner, GIFs represents perfect instantiation of both concepts. The paper also addresses the main “portrait” of GIFs, examining them in both online (Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook) and offline discursive contexts. The signifieds attributed to particular examples of GIFs, and to GIFs in general, delineate their profile in terms of floating signifiers

What Makes a Data-GIF Understandable?

GIFs are enjoying increasing popularity on social media as a format for data-driven storytelling with visualization; simple visual messages are embedded in short animations that usually last less than 15 seconds and are played in automatic repetition. In this paper, we ask the question, "What makes a data-GIF understandable?" While other storytelling formats such as data videos, infographics, or data comics are relatively well studied, we have little knowledge about the design factors and principles for "data-GIFs". To close this gap, we provide results from semi-structured interviews and an online study with a total of 118 participants investigating the impact of design decisions on the understandability of data-GIFs. The study and our consequent analysis are informed by a systematic review and structured design space of 108 data-GIFs that we found online. Our results show the impact of design dimensions from our design space such as animation encoding, context preservation, or repetition on viewers' understanding of the GIF's core message. The paper concludes with a list of suggestions for creating more effective Data-GIFs

Of Mammies, Minstrels, and Machines: Movement-Image Automaticity and the Impossible Conditions of Black Humanity

This thesis argues that the GIF, as an underexplored analytical vertex within the broader matrix of media ecologies, should be understood as a generative nodal point in the American system of racialized violence. Thought in relation to its medium specificity, the GIF\u27s materiality, particularly its capacity for infinite looping, is critically interrogated for its potential to amplify the circuitry of dominating racialization that felicitously condition the GIF\u27s circulation. I open my argument with focus on a subset of the GIF genre known as the reaction GIF, which, in its frequently racialized form, is situated within the interconnected genealogies of the figures of the mammy, the minstrel, and the machine. The reaction GIF is shown as a contemporary iteration of minstrel performance, known as blackface minstrelsy, that is deeply imbricated with the subordinating racialization of Black women. I demonstrate that the violent genealogies of mammy, minstrel, and machine facilitate the machinic transfiguration of Black women made into GIF content, a process of making-machine of the Black woman subject. Making-machine is the site of ontological capture the racialized reaction GIF institutes, and those Black women caught within its digital field become the inhuman iconography of the medium\u27s motif. To substantiate this account of the racializing properties of the GIF, the text engages the GIF at the level of its mediatic specificity and through questions of affective labor and its expropriation. I contend that the mediatic properties of the GIF are central to its modulating brokerage of affect, and it is this capacity to disperse infinitely differentiated affective impulses that underpins the racialized reaction GIF\u27s making-machine of Black women subjects

‘That perfect girl is gone’:Pro-ana, Anorexia and Frozen (2013) as an ‘Eating Disorder’ Film

The study of pro-anorexia (pro-ana) sites occupies a significant place in critical feminist work on eating disorders. But pro-ana sites have been studied as particular subcultural spaces which function to produce communities, identity positions and modes of subversive/ conformist femininities. Although anorexia might often be experienced as all-encompassing, people who are anorexic/ pro-anorexic don’t just ‘do’ anorexia. They also participate in everyday activities like engaging with media and as with ‘normal’ audiences, such encounters provide important resources for identity construction. In drawing on the feminist bid to challenge the conception of anorexic voices as pathological and ‘sick’, existing only ‘outside of the true’ (Saukko 2008, 77), this article explores a sample of pro-ana responses to Frozen, undertaking an analysis of the ways in which Frozen has been understood as an ‘eating disorder’ film and used in relation to pro-anorexic/ anorexic identities

The Phenomenological Exploration of Animated GIF Use in Computer-Mediated Communication

The current study seeks to remedy the lack of scholarly investigation into the use of animated GIFs in computer-mediated communication (CMC). Through phenomenological analysis of in-depth 1-on-1 interviews with individuals engaging in the behavior, one over-arching theme was found with the four underlying sub-themes of: Choice, Meaning, Use and Gratification. Individuals using animated GIFs in their CMC seem to formulate a mental image of an expression they wish to demonstrate and select a GIF that fits a particular context, within a specific conversation, with a specific person. Individuals seem to construct meaning of animated GIFs by reading social cues such as facial expressions and body language presented by the actors in the GIF and combining it with the context of the conversation and the person or persons they are communicating with. Individuals seem to use animated GIFs to actively compensate for the lack of social cue transmission in CMC, and seem do so for the purpose of humor, clarification of message, and to increase saliency. Lastly, this whole process seems to be lubricated by a feedback loop of gratification where in individuals feel their communication is improved and more enjoyable than with just words. The current findings are relevant to theories of communication as well as to online education. Recommendations for future research into their effectiveness for educational purposes are provided

Ultrasound—Re:viewing Bodies

A medical evaluation of physical impairment imposes the additional burden of “labeling” the patient with the condition. The binary nature of the normal versus abnormal label emphasizes difference and can lead to trauma. Understanding differences, however, can lead to the generation of new forms and thus, more sensitive differentiation and representation. Tension is created by exploring different bodily forms—a dialectic between form and essence. I am designing a space that visualizes and illuminates difference as a source of trauma and amplifying the tension by comparing figures that represent varying degrees of normalcy. This forms a critique of idealized form and creates a context for people unaffected by this type of trauma to reflect on possible realities outside of their assumptions of normality