Tell me what you laugh at, and I'll tell you who you are

Hypermedia Humor in the processes of collective identification

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe two procedures of Hypermedia Humor in the generation and daily activation of identity collectives. We call Hypermedia Humor the laughable produced in the interaction between mass media and Internet and telephone-based media (Fraticelli, 2023). The paper starts from the semiotic approach of Veron's (2013, 2012, 1997, 1994, 1987b) concept of identity collective and his periodization of the link between the conformation of collectives and mediatization. Then, we focus on the changes brought by the new media system to the generation of collectives, among which is the action of Hypermedia Humor. From it, we concentrate on two basic procedures of everyday life: the production of laughable publications in the networks and the regulation of their circulation. Both generate membership in identification collectives. We describe the ways in which they operate by analyzing two cases. The first is the production of hypermediatized political humor of the first speech at the opening of the legislative sessions of President Alberto Fernández and the debate in the Senate on the Law on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy. And the second is the regulation of the laughable generation of the former president of ArteBA, Juan Lynch, in which different hypermedia enunciators from the art world and the media took part.