Aaron From Minnesota

Social semiotics is a method of analyzing visual imagery in social contexts, focusing on how we interperet and make meaning from signs, symbols, photographs, drawings ... even things like gestures and other forms of nonverbal communication. The term was coined by Michael Halliday and the concept was expanded on by Gunther Kress.  The idea is important for different reasons in different contexts. In everyday "real life" communication, it's critical to remember that people we're in communication with are absorbing far more than the words we're saying or writing, and they are including everything they are seeing in the context into which they're placing our words. If we even use words, that is. There are lots of times when communication is ONLY done through semiotics. I'm building Ikea furniture right now, for example, and there's not a single word in this instruction booklet.  In online contexts, it's important to take this into consideration, becaus...

Before I answer this week's questions, I invite you to listen to my favorite Talking Heads song. It's from the perspective of a paranoid man afraid of his urban environment. (Gittins 2004)  In particular, the lyrics " Facts all come with points of view . Facts don't do what I want them to . Facts just twist the truth around . Facts are living turned inside out." reflect the worldview of a person who is not happy when presented with facts that disagree with what he wants and/or believes to be the "truth."   When Crosseyed and Painless was released in 1980, there were only three television networks that aired national news, and most major geographical areas had an independently owned and operated newspaper.  People had no choice but to be exposed to facts, as curated by journalists and experts.  Social media now drives the way many of us engage with real life. And what we see on social media is dictated by algorithms that are designed to keep us on that ...