This is me.

I am an Associate Professor in Communication and Information Studies at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

I am a #multimodalist with a multi-faceted background in linguistics, semiotics, and discourse analysis and have more than 15 years of experience in working with visual and audiovisual communication. In my work, I deal with a broad variety of communicative artefacts with expertise in films and audiovisual data, comics, social media and games. I have contributed to the theoretical and methodological development of multimodality studies and also work in corpus-analytical and empirically oriented projects. At the moment, I focus on the question of how (audio-)visual communication can help building a better future for our society.

At the University of Groningen, I teach classes on multimodality, digital communication, visual and audio-visual analysis, and I work as programme coordinator of the Master program Communication and Information Studies.

I am the Chief Editor of the journal 'Visual Communication', one of the key journals in the field of visual and multimodal communication; Associate Editor for the speciality section 'Multimodality of Communication' with Frontiers in Communication; and book series editor for 'Pathways to Multimodality' with de Gruyter..

The best way to contact me is by writing an email.

This is what I'm currently working on.

Recent Publication

Serafis, Dimitris, Wildfeuer, Janina (2025). "Studying soft hate speech online: Synthesising approaches from multimodality research and argumentation theory." In: Becker, M.J.; Scheiber, M.; Jensen, U. (eds.). Imagery of Hate Online. Open Book Publishers, 201--220. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0447.09.

Wildfeuer, Janina (2025). "Multimodale Texte lesen. Theoretische und methodische Bausteine aus der Multimodalitätsforschung". In: Staiger, Michael (ed.). Schrift / Bild – Lesen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven für die Leseforschung. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 27--46. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-69717-7_2.

Latest Book

Jaki, Sylvia; Meiler, Matthias; Pflaeging, Jana; Wildfeuer, Janina (eds.) (2024). Multimodalität in Wissensformaten. Peter Lang Verlag. Open Access.

Recent Projects

In my research, I am mainly interested in short video content and, more particularly, on TikTok videos and their corpus/empirical analysis. A paper on annotating these videos with regard to larger amounts of data is about to be published - really, hopefully!

Another research interest deals with multimodal argumentation, e.g. in trailers, advertisments, TikTok videos, or news items.

And of course, questions related to AI-generated media artefacts need to be addressed. We do this in our working group "Multimodality and AI" at the Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI.

Most recently, I focus more strongly on the question how the analysis of (audio-)visuals help us make the world better, i.e. for challenges such as mis-/disinformation, fake news, and hate speech. I am part of the research group RESPONSUS at the University of Groningen that deals with the critical awareness of the power and problems of language and communication.


Books in Preparation

Handbuch Comicforschung, together with Christian Bachmann, Juliane Blank and Stephan Packard.

Arguing with Multiple Semiotic Modes. Theoretical Issues and Empirical Advances in Multimodal Argumentation Studies, together with Hartmut Stöckl and Assimakis Tseronis, de Gruyter.

Multimodality - A Hands-On Guide, together with John A. Bateman and Tuomo Hiippala. Under contract with de Gruyter.

Online Lectures

For my online teaching, I prepared videos of online lectures in the broad field of #multimodality, as I teach them in the study course "Communication and Information Studies" (BA/MA) at the University of Groningen, NL.