Webtoons: Form and Meaning in Digital Comics

How much do digital platforms shape reading? If forms do “effect meaning” (McKenzie 1999), how are comics changed by being written and published within digital, especially mobile platforms? This presentation will discuss the findings of the Innovations in Digital Comics book, its analysis of the webtoon as the first natively digital, mobile optimised comics format, and its effects on the comics communications circuit. The presentation will focus on the need to move from large-scale quantitative analysis to a more qualitative, “thick” data approach. Ernesto will be introducing Francesca Benatti’s presentation and chairing the discussion

About the speaker:

Dr Ernesto Priego is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, and a co-director of the Data, Policy and Society MSc at City St George’s, University of London, and editor and founder of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. As a researcher he has explored the role of comics as narrative, conceptual and speculative design tools and applies user-centred, participatory co-design methods to the creation of comics within public health or social interest domains. Ernesto led the “Parables of Care. Responses to Dementia Care” project (2017-2021), which explored the potential of comics to enhance the impact of dementia care research. Ernesto’s profile pic by Francisco de la Mora (2023).