Ideology and manipulation in travel documentaries: a cognitive-semiotic approach

Session 1: Monday, 17th October, 16:00-18:30

This session will take the form of a seminar and will provide an overview of my doctoral project, which was completed earlier this year. The abstract and a digital copy of the thesis can be found here: https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/91182/cognition-and-ideolog...

The first half of the seminar will cover the theoretical underpinnings of the thesis, with a particular focus on:

- Analysing ideology through Gramscian and Critical Realist lenses

- Key concepts in multimodal research

- Analysing cognitive aspects, namely manipulation and epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010) through Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995)

The second part of the seminar will focus on methodological aspects and look at some examples from the case studies contained in the thesis. Here the focus will be on:

- Integrating Audience Research in the methodological architecture

- Exploring semiotic and cognitive aspects of meaning interpretation as well as media effects

Participants are encouraged to interact and ask questions throughout the seminar.

Session 2: Tuesday, 18th October, 18:00-21:00

This session will take the form of a workshop. The aims are for participants to consider how aspects covered in Session 1 may be applied to their own research projects/agendas. Participants are strongly recommended to bring in some data of their own (whether actual or of the type they are currently analysing or wish to work on in a future project).

The first half of the workshop will focus on methodological aspects:

- Research design

- Participant and data selection

- Qualitative research instruments

The second half of the workshop will focus on analytical and interpretative aspects:

- Carrying out a multimodal text analysis

- Exploring and interpreting ideologies

- Exploring and interpreting critical connections between multimodal texts/discourses and society