Mari-Liis Madisson Author

Mari-Liis Madisson received her PhD in Semiotics and Culture Studies from the University of Tartu, Estonia in 2016. She is a Research Fellow at the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu and a visiting Research Fellow at School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at the Queen's University Belfast, UK. Her research combines cultural semiotics, political semiotics, communication and media studies. Her research interests lie in online culture, conspiracy theories, information influence activities and extreme right communication. She is the author of The Semiotic Construction of Identities in Hypermedia Environments:The Analysis of Online Communication of the Estonian Extreme Right (2016).

Andreas Ventsel is a senior researcher of semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. He holds an MA degree and a PhD in Semiotics. He teaches a range of subjects in semiotics, society and politics, cultural theory, and research seminars. His research is interdisciplinary, which includes semiotics, discourse theory, visual communication, rhetoric and political analysis with particular focus on post-structural political thought. Since 2007, Ventsel has participated in several research projects in the fields of semiotics, visual studies and strategic communication. He has presented the results of research on these topics in around 100 academic articles and has been the editor of several Estonian-based and international scientific journals. He is the author of Towards Semiotic Theory of Hegemony (2009) and Introducing Relational Political Analysis (co-authored with Peeter Selg, 2020).