Reeta Karjalainen

Contact search available for JYU staff members.

ORCID link: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2517-511X

General description

I work as a PhD researcher in applied linguistics at the Department of Language and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. From January 2024, I will be working on my doctoral thesis full-time, funded by the Kone Foundation. I have previously worked as an educational coordinator at JyU education services and as a designer at the Centre for Applied Language Studies.

Active JYU affiliations

Department of Language and Communication Studies, Grant Researcher
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Doctoral Student

Previous, inactive or other affiliations

Department of Language and Communication Studies (University of Jyväskylä), Research Assistant, Ended
University Services (University of Jyväskylä), Education Coordinator, Ended
University Services (University of Jyväskylä), Koulutussuunnittelija, Ended
University Services (University of Jyväskylä), Study Secretary, Ended
Centre for Applied Language Studies (University of Jyväskylä), Coordinator, Ended

Department of Language and Communication Studies (University of Jyväskylä), Grant researcher, Other affiliation

Research interests

Theme: “My depressed ass laughing at memes:” multimodal analysis on representation of mental health and illness in internet memes

Supervisors: Samu Kytölä, Saara Jäntti & Saara Särmä

In my dissertation, I examine mental health and mental illness themed humorous internet images better known as memes; their peculiar intertextual humour, their representation of mental health and illness, and their connections to the wider discourses surrounding mental health. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, memes that reflect psycho-social struggles, while still being laughable and cartoonish, become more popular every day. Memes are an essential part of internet culture and a means of communicating ideas and ideologies. Therefore, studying these memes can reveal important aspects of mental health discourses today; how these everyday cultural items use different resources to create humour on such a dark topic, and how the memes participate on wider cultural and societal issue of mental health and illness.My method is multimodal critical discourse analysis.