Disability Memes
"Inspiration porn" was a term coined by the late journalist and activist Stella Young to describe a genre of discourse that objectifies people with disabilities in order to 'inspire' people without them, such as the image at left. Memes -- intertextual, multimodal discourses that combine text and images and circulate online -- often perpetuate this inspiration master narrative in society. Our work has critically examined inspiration porn memes to outline linguistic criteria for this genre of discourse. Our research analyzes counter-narratives in memes posted on social media by people with disabilities themselves.
Our research analyzing counternarratives focuses on the Instagram app disability community. Searching through hashtags such as #disabilitymemes and #notyourinspiration, we collect publicly available memes made by people with disabilities responding to master narratives such as inspiration porn and the medical model.
We share our research through multiple venues, such as academic research groups, community outreach events, and conferences, as described in this W&M News article. At a recent event at the Center for Student Diversity, we discussed our disability memes research to aid people's identification of inspiration porn and amplification of counternarratives by the disability community.