Exploring graphic pathographies construction: a multimodal analysis
In the last couple of years, medical information has been presented across different digital and visual forms of communication. Mainly, comics are published on various social media platforms and websites to submit a medical discourse about public health concerns or individual human experiences such...
| Autor: | |
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/687973 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/687973 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Graphic pathographies construction Autografías médicas visuales 81 |
| Sumario: | In the last couple of years, medical information has been presented across different digital and visual forms of communication. Mainly, comics are published on various social media platforms and websites to submit a medical discourse about public health concerns or individual human experiences such as cancer, anxiety, or depression. Moreover, when looking closely at these human experiences, we discovered graphic medical memoirs or graphic pathographies. These are long visual narratives that present an entire medical journey. They capture the unique human experience by exploring a medical condition’s emotional and technical aspects. Consequently, this study explores the visual and textual elements that help communicate medical information on the condition’s symptoms, medical treatments, procedures, and side effects. We focused on five objectives: 1) to identify specific technical and medical knowledge communicated in a predetermined graphic novel corpus; 2) to identify visual elements (text, image, color, panel transition, word-picture combination, narrative plot, a point of view, etc.) used to represent this knowledge; 3) to document, analyze, and interpret how readers decipher these resources and what they understand from them; 4) to discover readers’ basic reading practices, such as seeking additional information, consulting external resources that aid or contribute to their reading process, and interacting with graphic pathographies, and 5) to contextualize medical graphic narratives and their role in health literacy or knowledge and social practices in relation to an illness. Specifically, we investigate these areas in two stages: first, we constructed a corpus of 17 graphic pathographies in English, Spanish, Catalan, and French that covered different medical conditions such as cancer, severe anxiety, and depression, Crohn's disease, down syndrome, autism, bipolar disorder, and childhood schizophrenia. Moreover, each graphic novel was analyzed and interpreted deeply three times during the selection process from 60 graphic pathographies. Once we had selected the graphic pathographies, we proceeded to code them according to preselecting themes. However, we noted emerging themes and later integrated them into the coding system. We analyzed the medical condition, procedure, treatment, appointments, color, panel transition, word-picture combinations, and visual references/ metaphors. We also interviewed ten avid graphic narrative readers to learn about their reading habits. We discovered the visual and textual elements that help them understand the medical information in the reading packets we created. In total, we conducted two sets of interviews. In the first interview, we learn about the participants reading practices, habits, and themes. While in the second interview, we talk about the reading packets. Specifically, we selected for the English reading packet: Marbles Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me by Ellen Forney and Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell. The Spanish reading packet consisted of R.I.P by Felipe Almendros and 17 Vivir, Revivir, Sobrevivir by Àlex Santaló. We learned that specific visual elements such as style, panel transitions, wordpicture combination, color, visual metaphor, and references contribute to communicating different aspects of a medical journey by presenting and focusing on the following phases: experiencing symptoms, visiting a doctor (medical appointment), undergoing diagnostic tests, receiving a diagnosis (test results), undergoing medical treatment or procedures, experiencing sideeffects from the treatment and procedure, and recovery/ managing a medical condition. The results suggest that technical, medical information sequences use a diverse combination of panel transitions and word-picture combinations, while emotional experiences also combine these elements. They present symptoms and positive and negative reactions toward a treatment, procedure, or diagnosis through color, visual metaphors, and references. For example, picture-specific word-picture combinations and visual references or metaphors communicate pain, distress, and medical experiences. The panel sequences focus on individual and private experiences such as receiving a diagnosis or being prepared for an invasive surgical procedure (medical procedure). Moreover, we discovered that different visual references and metaphors give an insight into the character's personality and illustrate inexplicable physical and emotional experiences; specifically, movie, comic, cartoon, and manga visual references across 3 of the four selected graphic pathographies. Moreover, all four graphic pathographies use different visual metaphors specific to the characters' medical conditions to communicate their symptoms, medical procedures, or treatment side effects, such as side effects from medication, surgery, or chemotherapy. These visual metaphors included cultural references, animals, insects, and mundane objects. In terms of color, it marked medical environments, intense emotions, medical conditions, and visual references or metaphors. It also reinforced the panel sequences message and drew the reader's attention to specific panels and images within the panel, such as tumors or surgical scars. The examples above suggest that different visual elements communicate different aspects of a medical experience—the relationship between image and text shifts across the sequences to illustrate complex emotional and medical information. Additionally, we discovered that panel sequences presenting detailed information about a condition or treatment were word specific. Therefore, these panel sequences had more speech or narration bubbles. Finally, the interview results suggest that a traditional comic or graphic narrative format facilitated the participants reading experience. Color, visual metaphors, or visual references help the reader understand and, at times, relate to the emotional aspects of the characters’ medical journey in specific narrative sequences. Some participants share their personal experiences and reflect on them by making critical comments about the issue of medication or the scenes settings. Which in turn introduces the notion of “how accurate are medical sequences portrayed?”. This question prompted ideas on whether graphic pathographies need to be medically accurate since they are medical memoirs. Hence personal experiences from a specific perspective and perhaps their intent is not to provide medical information but share a personal medical experience. |
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