Browsing by Subject "meaning-making"

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    The significance of meaning-making, agency and social support: a narrative study of how poor women cope with perinatal loss
    (2012) Sturrock, Colleen; Swartz, Sally
    Perinatal loss (stillbirth or the death of a neonate) can result in considerable psycho-social disruption for mothers. As women grieve, they try to make meaning of the death of their baby. In contexts of social and economic deprivation, perinatal loss often occurs alongside other difficulties which may affect and limit women's ability to make meaning. A narrative approach was used to explore how meaning-making functions in such contexts. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 women who had experienced perinatal loss while attending a state maternity hospital. Narratives which the mothers constructed of the event were examined in order to understand what meanings they derived from the loss, and how these were (or not) achieved. These narratives were often linked to other stories of pervasive life difficulties. Despite their difficult contexts, the bereaved mothers engaged in meaning-making in similar ways to those described in previous studies in more affluent settings: they attempted to integrate the loss with their identity and goals, they affirmed the baby as a real person to be mourned and they searched for reasons for the loss. The effect of their contexts on meaning-making was mediated by social support and personal agency. Where one or both of these were present, the bereaved mothers were able to find meaning in their loss; women who had neither seemed unable to do so. Those who portrayed themselves as agentic were able to reflect on their experience and make decisions to change their lives. Mothers with strong social support made meaning through conversations, social validation of the loss and social help which mitigated against the sense of helplessness engendered by their loss and circumstances. It is recommended that hospital and counselling services implement practices which help to build or consolidate personal agency and social support to facilitate successful meaning-making following perinatal loss.
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    The semantics of emojis and memes: understanding meaning- making among social media users
    (2025) Francis, Tasneem; Mpendukana, Sibonile
    There is no doubt that the use of emojis and memes within computer-mediated communication (CMC) on social media platforms like Facebook has become an essential part of how people communicate online (see Thurlow 2018; Thurlow and Jaroski 2020; Barbieri et al 2016; Bai et al 2019 and Thurlow and Dü rscheid 2020). A lot of work has been done to study meaning related to emojis and memes and how they function within communication (see Deumert 2014; Zhu and Ren 2022; Lynch 2022 and Ljubešić and Fišer 2016). This current study advocates for a user-centric approach to understanding meaning- making. The strength of what I am proposing in my research is how to draw an analysis of meaning-making practices linked to the use of emojis and memes within CMC while allowing users to advocate for themselves from their perspectives. This current research unpacked how the average person on Facebook attached meaning to emojis and memes when they are selected and used to communicate online. The goal was to understand whether the meaning attached is shared and universal or if there was room for different modes of expression and meaning-making. The data collected for this research included quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data. Surveys were used as a starting point for conducting one-on-one interviews with a selected number of people who were open to being interviewed after completing the survey. The study concluded that different emojis and memes are used by different people, in different ways, however, the meaning attached to different emojis, and memes become universal over time when it is shared by people. The data provided evidence that universal and shared meaning occurs. However, within the same data, there was evidence to support that even though shared and universal meaning is happening, there is still room for different modes of expression online.