Michele Zappavigna

Associate Professor Michele Zappavigna is an academic at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) within the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture. Her research focuses on the discourse of social media, emphasizing linguistic, paralinguistic, and multimodal patterns, particularly in how online communities form 'ambient affiliation.' She authored influential books such as Discourse of Twitter and Social Media and Searchable Talk: Hashtags and Social Media Metadiscourse. Her work addresses topics like emoji semiotics, multimodal communication in TikTok, and the analysis of extremist discourse on platforms like YouTube.

Awarded the Dean's Research Award for Scholarly Impact for her groundbreaking book on Twitter discourse, Zappavigna teaches courses like Social Media (ARTS2091) and Mobile Cultures (ARTS2093). She supervises PhD students researching topics ranging from digital harassment to deception in misinformation. Current advisees include Lorenzo Logi (comedy bonding), Nida Tahseen (female journalist harassment), and Awni Shati Mohammad Etaywe (linguistic analysis of terrorist communication).

Zappavigna's recent publications (2023–2025) explore emoji's role in TikTok interactions, the legitimation of screenshots in disinformation, and systemic functional linguistics in analyzing far-right discourse. Her articles highlight digital media's evolving semiotics, emphasizing how users bond through multimodal strategies and platforms' social dynamics.

Her research extends to ASMR role-play videos' sensory immersion and the recontextualization of political speeches in TikTok. She advocates for ethical AI tools to handle social media corpus analysis, bridging linguistics with computational methods.

Zappavigna's work is accessible via her Google Scholar profile and personal site (http://michelezappavigna.com), offering insights into the evolving landscape of digital discourse and its societal implications.