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Rhetorics of Affect and Compositional Patterns

The eHumanities junior research group “Audio-Visual Rhetorics of Affect,” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, focused on affect-rhetorical patterns of audio-visual images in a comparative corpus study. The aim of this approach is to open up perspectives for the investigation of audio-visual communication and discursivity beyond content analysis.

Projekt „Audio-visual rhetorics of affect” (AdA)
(BMBF-Junior research group, 2016–2021)

The AdA-project investigated central affect-rhetorical figurations as recurring staging patterns in the audio-visual discourse on the global financial crisis (2007–). The core idea was that the various affective stances of feature films, documentaries, and TV news towards “the financial crisis” are grounded in their compositional patterns. The comparative corpus study utilized computer-assisted (manual and semi-automatic) video annotation, as well as their visualization and possibilities for data exploration.

The project further developed the descriptive approach of eMAEX with a machine-readable, systematized vocabulary. Following the eMAEX-routine of segmentation, the objects of study were segmented in scenes on an analytical meso-level. The scalable analysis of movement figurations and compositional patterns on the micro-, meso-, and macro-level however, is based on the utilization of thorough video annotation. For the detailed annotation of intricate as well as complex compositional patterns, the systematic descriptive vocabulary of the AdA Filmontology was created, which formed the base for both, a comprehensive manual and semi-automatic annotation. Additionally, automatic extractors were employed within the framework of a server-based data management. A part of the project involved developing and adapting the necessary tools for such a corpus study, thus providing possibilities of annotation, visualization, and data exploration. The dataset of the AdA-project has been published on Zenodo.

Further Reading:

Intervening World Projections: Audiovisuality of Climate Change

The procedures and tools for video annotation, visualization, and data exploration developed in the AdA-project are utilized and adapted by another research project which investigates intervening cinematic world projections of climate change. It focuses on the transfers between various formats of audio-visual image production, between science, journalism, entertainment, and activism, examining how they modulate the spatiotemporal perception patterns of everyday actions and global processes. The project explores how the dissemination of facts and political positions is combined with affective strategies, the formation of participation, the development of scenarios of the future and spatial schemata of planetary ecology(/-ies).

Projekt "Intervening World Projections: Audiovisuality of Climate Change"
(SFB 1512, 2021–)
The project investigates images of climate change: Feature films and documentaries, internet videos and nature documentaries that intervene in audio-visual discourses as world projections and ideas of the future, and as such strive to influence current behavior.

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