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Semiotics of social networking

Semiotics of social networking

 

Social media gives humans an instant connection to communicate with others. Social media is "used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. Where media means digital words, sounds & pictures which are typically shared via the internet and the value can be cultural, societal or even financial"

[1] One important way to explore this form of communication as social networking is through semiotics.

Semiotics

Semiotics[2] is looking for signs’ meaning[3] Semiotic structuralism looks for the signs’ meaning in social interaction involved[4] However, post-structuralist theories take tools from (structuralism) semiotics combined with social interaction.[5] This is called social semiotics.[6] Social semiotics is “a branch of the field of semiotics which investigates human signifying practices in specific social and cultural circumstances, and which tries to explain meaning-making as a social practice”.[7] “Social semiotics also examines semiotic practices, specific to a culture and community, for the making of various kinds of texts and meanings in various situational contexts and contexts of culturally meaningful activity”.[8]

Social Networking

Social networking is communication of one person with another person in a virtual social space using a computer.[9] Social media gives humans instant connection to communicate with others. This new area of communication allows new insight into social semiotics. Social semiotics is studying human interactions through situations.[10] “Millions of people now interact through blogs, collaborate through wikis, play multiplayer games, publish podcasts and video, build relationships through social network sites, and evaluate all the above forms of communication through feedback and ranking mechanisms”.[11] Social semiotics “unlike speech, writing necessitates some sort of technology in the form of person device interaction”.[12] Social semiotics function through the triad of communication or Peircean Semiotic (Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)) [13] in the form of sign,object, interpretant[14] (Chart 1), and “Human, Machine, Tag (Information)”[15] (Chart 2). In Peircean semiotics (Chart 1), "A sign…[in the form of representamen] is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea which I have something called the ground of the representamen".[16]

Social Semiotics

Social Semiotics (Chart 2)

Human-Social interacting.[17]

Machine–Computers are created by humans and now have social applications.[18]

Tag– Picture/information tagging on social networks “has changed the traditional online communication process”.[19]

This example of the triangle of Human, Machine, Tag is shown when looking at tagging photographs on Facebook (Chart 3).[20] The Human takes the photo on a camera and puts the digital file (information) on the Machine, the Machine is then navigated to Facebook where the file is downloaded. The Human has the Machine Tag the photo with information (names, places, data) for other Humans to see. This process then can be continued (see Chart 2). “Collaborative tagging has been quickly gaining ground because of its ability to recruit the activity of web users into effectively organizing and sharing vast amounts of information”.[21]

Semiotics of Social Networking (Chart 3)

Semiotics of Social Media.

Sign as Human: "the form which the sign takes (not necessarily material, though usually interpreted as such".[22] Photo of Human is the Sign/Human.

Object as Machine: "something beyond the sign to which it refers (a referent)".[23] Computer, digital file, social media is the Object/Machine.

Interpretant as Tag: "not an interpreter but rather the sense made of the sign".[24] Names, places, dates is the Interpretanat/Tag.

References

  1.  
  2. Jump up ^ Social Media. May 3, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Social media
  3. Jump up ^ Semiotics. March 6, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Semiotics
  4. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge.
  5. Jump up ^ Structuralism. April 25, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Structuralism.
  6. Jump up ^ Post-structuralism. April 25th, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Poststructuralist
  7. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge.
  8. Jump up ^ Social Semiotics. March 6, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Social semiotics
  9. Jump up ^ Lemke, J. L. Important Theories for Research Topics. 2002. Internet on-line. Available from academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu
  10. Jump up ^ Artsnooze. Social Networking (Semiotics, Phenomenology, Epistemology, Ontology, Culture studies). 2009. Internet on-line. Available from scribd.com
  11. Jump up ^ Hodge, R., and G. Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Polity: Cambridge.
  12. Jump up ^ Warschauer, Mark, Douglas Grimes. 2007. Audience, Authorship, and Artifact: The Emergent Semiotics of Web 2.0. Cambridge Journal 27, no. Annual Review of Applied Linguistic: 1-1-23.
  13. Jump up ^ Noy, Chaim. 2008. Mediation materialized: The Semiotics of a Visitor Book at an Israeli Commemoration Site. Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, no. 2: 175(21).
  14. Jump up ^ Semiotic elements and classes of sign (Pierce. May 7, 2010. Internet on-line. Available from Semiotic elements and classes of signs (Peirce)
  15. Jump up ^ Mules, Warwick. 1997. The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication. Journal of Communication 47 p166(4).
  16. Jump up ^ Social Tagging, Online Communication, and Peircean Semiotics. 2008. Internet on-line. Available from http://www.slideshare.net/andreasinica/social-tagging-online-communication-and-peircean-semiotics-presentation
  17. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge
  18. Jump up ^ Thibault, P. J. 1991. Social Semiotics as Praxis: Text, Social Meaning Making, and Nabokov's Ada. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  19. Jump up ^ Hodge, R., and G. Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Polity: Cambridge.
  20. Jump up ^ Huang, Andrea W., Tyng-Ruey Chuang. 2009. Social Tagging, Online Communication, and Peircean Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework (report). Journal of Information Science 35, no. 3: 340(18).
  21. Jump up ^ White, L. 2010. Facebook, Friends and Photos: A Snapshot into Social Networking for Generating Travel Ideas (Chapter 7). In Tourism Informatics: Visual Travel Recommender Systems, Social Communities, and User Interface Design. Edited by N. Sharda. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
  22. Jump up ^ Cattuto, Ciro, Vittorio Loreto, and Luciano Pietronero. 2007. Semiotic Dynamics and Collaborative Tagging. (Applied Physical Sciences) (author abstract)(report). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 104, no. 5: 1461(4).
  23. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge
  24. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge.
  25. Jump up ^ Chandler, D. 2007. The Basics: Semiotics 2nd ed.. New York, NY: Routledge
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Author:Bling King
Published:Dec 23rd 2013
Modified:Dec 23rd 2013
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