Polysemy describes the capacity of a text to trigger multiple interpretations. Ironically, the phenomenon has been interpreted in different ways across the humanities and the social sciences. My research uses an interdisciplinary and mixed-method approach to dissect the working of polysemy in a manner that addresses the variety of origins and implications associated with meaning multiplicity in the contemporary media environment.
The semiotics of polysemy
What makes some encounters between audiences and media open to a wider spectrum of interpretations than others? Focusing on various media artifacts such as globally spread humorous emails and news reports about the economy, my research explores the semiotics of polysemy. I use a comparative approach to contrast media texts that have proven to provoke open or closed interpretive spheres, and identify mechanisms (such as narrative, character design, and writing style) that enhance and limit the meanings of texts.
Digital interpretive traces
How do digital audiences make use of the unprecedented tools at their disposal to creatively articulate and disseminate their interpretations of media? A second strand of my work uses the digital interpretive traces left behind by users – such as news comments or TikTok posts to explore how interpretations manifest themselves in public spaces, how they transform over time and how they differ across social groups (e.g., in contexts of political polarization or war). I am also constantly seeking to explore and develop methodologies that capture the nuance of interpretation at scale, e.g., by conceptualizing user-generated-content as audience frames competing over dominance in a marketplace of interpretations.
Audience turned producers in digital participatory culture
How do platforms and content creators, such as users producing parodies of music videos on YouTube and news companies using Facebook to propagate their reports intersect when envisioning their audience and how does that shape the produced content? Drawing on the sociology of culture and platform affordances, my work explores how perceptions of self, status, knowledge, and genre shape the social dynamics of content production across various platforms and the range of meanings encoded to that content.