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Title: Covid-19 comics as graphic networks of non-emergent healthcare: A multimodal discourse analysis of pandemic comics

 

Vol. 13(2), 2025, pp. 38-57

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46687/QIPN2270    

 

Author: Albeena Stephen

About the author: Albeena Stephen is a researcher at the Department of English and Cultural Studies at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, India. Her doctoral work in graphic medicine attempts to explore the visual language within COVID-19 Comics to understand the narrativization of psychological distress. An awardee of the Indian Council of Social Science Doctoral Research Fellowship, she was also a Summer Visiting Doctoral Research Fellow at Boston College, Massachusetts, USA. Her publications and research interests include comic/cartoon studies, trauma studies, posthumanism, and climate fiction. She is also a Secretarial Assistant to the Artha Journal of Social Sciences.

E-mail: albeena.stephen@res.christuniversity.in    

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7045-2745

Author: Reshma Jacob

About the author: Dr Reshma Jacob, Assistant Professor, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, India has completed her higher studies in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her MPhil and PhD were on the phonological aspect of second language acquisition and learning. She has to her credit paper presentations and research publications in various national and International conferences and refereed journals pertaining to the field of grammaticalization, sociolinguistics, phonetics and Phonology.

E-mail: reshma.jacob@christuniversity.in      

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9656-9968

           

Link: http://silc.fhn-shu.com/issues/2025-2/SILC_2025_Vol_13_Issue_2_038-057_20.pdf

 

Citation (APA): Stephen, A., & Jacob, R. (2025). Covid-19 comics as graphic networks of non-emergent healthcare: A multimodal discourse analysis of pandemic comics. Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 13(2), 38-57 https://doi.org/10.46687/QJOT5514.

 

Abstract: COVID-19 comic discourses articulating lived experiences during lockdown, isolation, and quarantine constructed a creative space of self and collective care. This research article explores how the multimodality within COVID-19 comic discourses aids in constructing a ‘networked public of graphic care’. Resorting to Dannah Boyd’s (2008; 2011) methodological framework of ‘networks of graphic care,’ comics on the themes of self-care, coping mechanisms, and mental well-being from the work COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (Boileau & Johnson, 2021) is analysed. A Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) is performed to decipher the visual and verbal comic devices employed in constructing this graphic network of care using Thierry Groensteen (2007) and Scott McCloud's (2008) comic theories. The analysis highlights the various visual and linguistic techniques that enhance the communicative effectiveness of COVID-19 comics as self-care tools. By intervening in the visuality of COVID-19 comics as a tool of mental healthcare on individual and collective levels, this study illustrates the potential of comic narratives as a sustainable mode of sustenance and care in times of adversity and uncertainty. Furthermore, drawing from the results, the article also proposes the potentiality of comic discourses as non-emergent healthcare tools and a pedagogical tool for the successive policy implementation of mental healthcare measures.

Keywords: COVID-19 Comics, Graphic care, Mental health, Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA), Self and collective care

 

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