Elena Mattei
Elena Mattei holds a PhD and is Doctor Europaeus in Digital Humanities for English Studies (SSD: L-LIN/12; University of Verona). Her research interests focus on the collection, annotation and analysis of tourism multimodal corpora on social media, with particular attention to the development of a multidisciplinary and mixed methodological framework integrating data-driven semiotics into social semiotics and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The social mission and main objective of her research is to conceive and apply sistematically, empirically both methods and tools to foster multimodal literacy. The final aim is specifically to promote the active design of counternarratives or 'cybersituations' for social change, particularly in terms of environmental protection and informed use of social media. More at: https://www.dlls.univr.it/?ent=persona&id=22467
PhD dissertation (embargo until volume publication: https://iris.univr.it/handle/11562/1098826).
Short summary of her PhD research
Her DH project focused on carrying out a multidisciplinary investigation into tourism boards' multimodal communication strategies through both quantitative and qualitative methods, with particular focus on text-image relationships in the digital promotion of the traveling experience on Instagram and company websites. It investigated specifically how discourse specialists systematically combine linguistic resources with digital photography to design particular representations of the travel experience and convey specific, positive attitudes towards holiday destinations that depend on contextual variables, including the multisemiotic ensemble's medium of dissemination. Indeed, multimodal strategies were demonstrated to vary significantly according to both the medium's communicative role in the marketing funnel of persuasion and the social needs of the corresponding audience in the journey towards purchase (Manca 2016; Shuqair and Cragg 2017; Ayeh et al. 2012).
To this aim, multimodal data were collected from Instagram accounts and official websites in order to compile different corpora. Her work includes the systematic, manual annotation of multimodal corpora and the statistical measurement of visual and linguistic strategies. A SFL-based, intersemiotic theoretical framework allowed for the detection of patterns of material regularities, which reflect new socio-semiotic, generic trends in the discourse semantics and legitimization strategies of digital tourism narratives.
Her thesis wishes also to emphasize the importance of data-driven multimodal research in the burgeoning field of Digital Humanities from a methodological, sociological, and multisemiotic perspective. The results of this study may also lead to an informed understanding as well as awareness of how ideologies are perpetuated in the current digital sphere and may be resisted. Consequently, this may support individuals in their attempts to challenge the legitimacy of established views, opinions, and passive acceptance of them, and contribute to the construction of counternarratives (Ahearn 2001; Plant 1992).
Supervisors: Sharon Hartle, John A. Bateman, and Mirella Agorni
PhD dissertation (embargo until volume publication: https://iris.univr.it/handle/11562/1098826).
Short summary of her PhD research
Her DH project focused on carrying out a multidisciplinary investigation into tourism boards' multimodal communication strategies through both quantitative and qualitative methods, with particular focus on text-image relationships in the digital promotion of the traveling experience on Instagram and company websites. It investigated specifically how discourse specialists systematically combine linguistic resources with digital photography to design particular representations of the travel experience and convey specific, positive attitudes towards holiday destinations that depend on contextual variables, including the multisemiotic ensemble's medium of dissemination. Indeed, multimodal strategies were demonstrated to vary significantly according to both the medium's communicative role in the marketing funnel of persuasion and the social needs of the corresponding audience in the journey towards purchase (Manca 2016; Shuqair and Cragg 2017; Ayeh et al. 2012).
To this aim, multimodal data were collected from Instagram accounts and official websites in order to compile different corpora. Her work includes the systematic, manual annotation of multimodal corpora and the statistical measurement of visual and linguistic strategies. A SFL-based, intersemiotic theoretical framework allowed for the detection of patterns of material regularities, which reflect new socio-semiotic, generic trends in the discourse semantics and legitimization strategies of digital tourism narratives.
Her thesis wishes also to emphasize the importance of data-driven multimodal research in the burgeoning field of Digital Humanities from a methodological, sociological, and multisemiotic perspective. The results of this study may also lead to an informed understanding as well as awareness of how ideologies are perpetuated in the current digital sphere and may be resisted. Consequently, this may support individuals in their attempts to challenge the legitimacy of established views, opinions, and passive acceptance of them, and contribute to the construction of counternarratives (Ahearn 2001; Plant 1992).
Supervisors: Sharon Hartle, John A. Bateman, and Mirella Agorni
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Papers by Elena Mattei
ADHO Digital Humanities Conference 2023 (DH2023)
This paper offers an understanding of the multilayered methodological framework developed and implemented to carry out a Digital Humanities project. The latter classified systematically visuo-linguistic features in contemporary tourism narratives by means of data-driven tagging models, annotations and statistical measurement of the frequency and variance of strategies across digital channels.
Books by Elena Mattei
Despite the outbreak and long-term, socio-economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic – which put academic activities under a severe strain – the conference proposal was warmly welcomed and promoted by the School as an opportunity for dialogue that could transcend disciplinary boundaries, and as and encouragement to continue the too often underappreciated but significant work of scientific research at the margins and on the margins.
It was from the concept of margins – seen as limit, as an opportunity, as a meeting place for contact and cross-fertilisation between definitions, traditional perspectives, societies, cultures – that the international conference Margins and Forgotten Places was developed.
Our main imperative since the conception of this work was the application of multifaceted expressions of research innovation to socially relevant challenges of the present age. For this reason, we drew the attention of every discipline to the commitment to collective well-being, and dedicated an entire day of reflection on the 17 SDGs of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Together with outstanding keynote speakers, more than sixty speakers presented their contributions, which are still available online on our YouTube channel, and which are partially published in this volume.
In an increasingly alienating and highly specialised academic world, we, the Organising Committee, wish to advocate the choral value of scientific research and advise as many colleagues as possible to promote interdisciplinary initiatives that deepen the little, the small and the useless. Only by actively listening what is different, indeed, can we truly appreciate what we already know, thus using our positive attitude towards learning and researching knowledge beyond borders to imagine and shape a different future.
Thesis Chapters by Elena Mattei
The study offers a multidisciplinary review that explores the connections between Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), semiotics and media studies, multimodality and sociology of tourism to gain an understanding of the current means of expression and legitimation of individuals’ socio-economic needs and desires in contemporary, postmodern society (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014; Dann 1996; Berger 1972; Barthes 1977).
The core section of the dissertation consists in a multimodal investigation into three tourism boards' communication strategies through quantitative and qualitative methods. The objectives of this study were achieved by developing a SFL framework that analyzed and compared linguistic and visual choices in each digital channel under investigation. To this aim, multimodal data were collected from the Instagram accounts and websites of Tourism Ireland, Destination Canada, and Tourism Western Australia. The work includes the systematic, manual annotation of multimodal corpora through a data- driven, tagging system based on the Grammar of Visual Design and Transitivity and Appraisal systems (Pflaeging et al. 2021; Martin and White 2005; Thompson 2008). The quantification of multisemiotic strategies, furthermore, allowed for a statistical measurement of their frequency and significant variance across digital channels. The methodology included also inter-coder reliability measures in R.
The overall analysis has helped to define new discursive trends that assign particular roles to prospective tourists and praise specific aspects of the travel destination depending on audiences’ social needs and the specific medium’s communicative aim in the marketing funnel of persuasion (Manca 2016). In this sense, this study unveils the emergence of an Instagram, image-centric genre of tourism discourse (Bateman 2014a) that focuses on the stimulation of imagination and irrational response through less informative but highly evocative, evaluative orchestrations (Stöckl et al. 2020). The latter specifically play on postmodern individuals’ inner desire for control and supposedly deliberate choice to engage emotively with the extra-ordinary (Urry and Larsen 2011). The results of this study may also lead to an informed understanding as well as an awareness of how ideologies are perpetuated today and may be resisted. Consequently, this may support individuals in their attempts to challenge the ‘legitimacy’ of established views, opinions, and passive acceptance of them, and contribute to the construction of ‘counternarratives’ (Ahearn 2001; Plant 1992).
ADHO Digital Humanities Conference 2023 (DH2023)
This paper offers an understanding of the multilayered methodological framework developed and implemented to carry out a Digital Humanities project. The latter classified systematically visuo-linguistic features in contemporary tourism narratives by means of data-driven tagging models, annotations and statistical measurement of the frequency and variance of strategies across digital channels.
Despite the outbreak and long-term, socio-economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic – which put academic activities under a severe strain – the conference proposal was warmly welcomed and promoted by the School as an opportunity for dialogue that could transcend disciplinary boundaries, and as and encouragement to continue the too often underappreciated but significant work of scientific research at the margins and on the margins.
It was from the concept of margins – seen as limit, as an opportunity, as a meeting place for contact and cross-fertilisation between definitions, traditional perspectives, societies, cultures – that the international conference Margins and Forgotten Places was developed.
Our main imperative since the conception of this work was the application of multifaceted expressions of research innovation to socially relevant challenges of the present age. For this reason, we drew the attention of every discipline to the commitment to collective well-being, and dedicated an entire day of reflection on the 17 SDGs of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Together with outstanding keynote speakers, more than sixty speakers presented their contributions, which are still available online on our YouTube channel, and which are partially published in this volume.
In an increasingly alienating and highly specialised academic world, we, the Organising Committee, wish to advocate the choral value of scientific research and advise as many colleagues as possible to promote interdisciplinary initiatives that deepen the little, the small and the useless. Only by actively listening what is different, indeed, can we truly appreciate what we already know, thus using our positive attitude towards learning and researching knowledge beyond borders to imagine and shape a different future.
The study offers a multidisciplinary review that explores the connections between Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), semiotics and media studies, multimodality and sociology of tourism to gain an understanding of the current means of expression and legitimation of individuals’ socio-economic needs and desires in contemporary, postmodern society (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014; Dann 1996; Berger 1972; Barthes 1977).
The core section of the dissertation consists in a multimodal investigation into three tourism boards' communication strategies through quantitative and qualitative methods. The objectives of this study were achieved by developing a SFL framework that analyzed and compared linguistic and visual choices in each digital channel under investigation. To this aim, multimodal data were collected from the Instagram accounts and websites of Tourism Ireland, Destination Canada, and Tourism Western Australia. The work includes the systematic, manual annotation of multimodal corpora through a data- driven, tagging system based on the Grammar of Visual Design and Transitivity and Appraisal systems (Pflaeging et al. 2021; Martin and White 2005; Thompson 2008). The quantification of multisemiotic strategies, furthermore, allowed for a statistical measurement of their frequency and significant variance across digital channels. The methodology included also inter-coder reliability measures in R.
The overall analysis has helped to define new discursive trends that assign particular roles to prospective tourists and praise specific aspects of the travel destination depending on audiences’ social needs and the specific medium’s communicative aim in the marketing funnel of persuasion (Manca 2016). In this sense, this study unveils the emergence of an Instagram, image-centric genre of tourism discourse (Bateman 2014a) that focuses on the stimulation of imagination and irrational response through less informative but highly evocative, evaluative orchestrations (Stöckl et al. 2020). The latter specifically play on postmodern individuals’ inner desire for control and supposedly deliberate choice to engage emotively with the extra-ordinary (Urry and Larsen 2011). The results of this study may also lead to an informed understanding as well as an awareness of how ideologies are perpetuated today and may be resisted. Consequently, this may support individuals in their attempts to challenge the ‘legitimacy’ of established views, opinions, and passive acceptance of them, and contribute to the construction of ‘counternarratives’ (Ahearn 2001; Plant 1992).