a brief overview of UNDERSTANDING MEDIA SEMIOTICS by MARCEL DANESI

1. Understanding Media Semiotics
Marcel Danesi
Presented by Fariha Asghar Rao
Roll # 09
PhD 2021-25

2. The Mediated world
“The bosses of our mass media, press, radio, film
and television, succeed in their aim of taking our
minds off disaster. Thus the distraction they offer
demands the antidote of maximum concentration on
disaster”.
Ernst Fisher (1899-1972)

3. Paradigm Shifts (1970) a term by Thomas Kuhu
 Oral cultures
 Pictographs
 Alphabetic writing
 Gutenberg Galaxy ..the invention of printing
Books the first true mass distraction device of history
 Electronic Galaxy
 Digital Galaxy

5. Pictograhs today

6. Representation and Transmission
 The process of recording ideas, knowledge or messages in
some physical way is Representation in semiotic
theory...use of signs
 Transmission is related to delivery, broadcasting or
communication of the message in some sensory based
way…role of sensory modalities

7. Types of media
 A natural medium
Ideas are transmitted in some biological based way.. Voice,
facial expressions, hand gestures
 An artifactual medium
Ideas are represented by means of some artifact …books,
paintings, sculptures, letters
 A mechanical medium
Ideas are transmitted by means of mechanical
inventions…radio, TV, telephones, computers

8. Media semiotics
 The primary goal of media semiotics is to catalogue and
analyze communication structures as they manifest
themselves in media products..
 The semioticians is guided by three basic questions….
 1. What does a certain structure (text, genre) means?
 2. How does it represent what it means?
 3. Why does it means what it means?

9. An outline of semiotic theory
 Signifying order
 Types of signs
an icon
resembles its referent in some way. Portraits, onomatopoeic words,
chemical food additives, perfumes, carved alphabet
an index
a sign that stands for or points out something in relation to
something else.
Words like here , there and Names..
a symbol
a sign that stands for something in an arbitrary convention. A V sign,
hand gestures, colours

10. Print Media
 Books are Print memory system. Knowledge storage
 Fictional books…entertainment and enlightenment
 Freud saw the mythic stories as theories of mind invented
to give expression to unconscious desires and impulses.
 Jung saw myth as unconscious form of language giving
expression to universal ideas called Archetypes. These
ideas constitute collective unconscious.

11. Film
Three main categories
 1. FEATURE FILMS
 Work of fiction
 Almost always narrative
 Has three stages of pre-production(script), production(filming) and post-
production(editing)
 2. DOCUMENTRIES
 Non-fiction related to real life situations
 3. ANIMATED FILMS
 Create illusion of movement fro a series of two dimensional or three
dimensional objects
 Nowadays produced digitally on computers

12. CONTEMPORARY MOVIE MAKING
 Presenting mythological themes in new technologically
effective ways….Jurassic park
 Italian cinema has introduced on location type of films
 In brazil a movement called cinema novo which
dramatizes the social ills
 Video and disc… a wider audience for movies.
 The question of authorship in film is complex as
compared to print media.
The role of screen writer and director.

13. CINEMA AND POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism is used in two ways in films..
 1. creating scenery to reinforce the irony or nihilism of the modern
world
 2. using only scenery to deliver he message
KOYAANISQATSI
 Film without words, unfolds through a series of discontinuous images
 No characters, no plot, dialogue or commentary. Nothing recognizable
as narrative

14. Television
 Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens
anywhere should be sensed everywhere.….people being able to see
and hear practically everything will be specially interested in almost
nothing.(rarity lost) (E.B.White)
 Television is blamed for helping to entrench our materialistic and
shallow culture…responsible for every evil, from obesity to street
violence.

15. Genres of TV
 NEWS TV
Noticeable effects on electoral politics and public opinions.
1960 elections between Nixon and kennedy. Presidential debate
broadcasted on radio as well as TV. According to surveys, radio listeners
felt that Nixon had won the debate, TV viewers picked Kennedy. Kennedy
won, hence the power of visual image over any other type.
TV coverage of Vietnam war helped change the rules of American
politics
 Unscripted TV
Started in 2001, enticed the audience by the power of reification

16. Three main effects of TV
 1. MYTHOLOGIZING EFFECT
Creating personages that are perceived as mythic figures, larger than life.
 2. HISTORY FABRICATION EFFECT
Fabricating history by inducing the impression in viewers that some ordinary
event is a momentous happening. People experience history through TV.
Pseudo-events
 3. COGNITIVE COMPRESSION EFFECT
presenting stories, information and features in compacted form for time
constrained transmission.. easily digestible information

17. The Computer and the Internet

18.  Digital Galaxy is an extension or outgrowth of Gutenberg
Galaxy
 Reception and decipherment of mediated messages are
coming more and more under the direct control of
receivers
 The senders of messages have never had so many media
tools at their disposal to persuade receivers.
 There are “Digital signifiers” that have new modes of
encoding, storing and retrieving text of all kinds.

19. Hypertextuality
 Refers to an interlinked system of text in which a user can
jump from one to another. This was made possible with
the help of hyperlinks—portions of a document that can be
linked to other related documents.
 Linear textuality of paper books

20. Three types of processes for interpreting a text
 1. ability to access the actual contents of the text at the
level of the signifiers i.e. ability to decode its words or
images
 2. knowledge of how the X = Y relation unfolds in the text
i.e. how the text generates its meanings (the receiver
should know cultural codes other than verbal and non
verbal codes.
 3. contextual factors
Mental navigation

21. The internet
 APRANET in 1960s ---- INTERNET in 1969
 Dramatic impact on higher education and business
 Classification of information
Dewey Decimal Classificatin system ..all knowledge is divided into ten main
classes,each of which is designated by a 100 number.
 Authorship and ownership of text. Question of plagiarism
 Introduction of WWW in 1989 made it possible to include graphics, animation,
video and sound.
 Development of URL (uniform resource locator) technology

22. Convergence…
 The convergence of computer with all the other media technologies is
the defining characteristic of mass communication today.
 Over reliance on computers has induced a mindset that sees
computers as intrinsic component of human processes. (the
millennium bug issue)
 Cyberspace
 Artificial Intelligence.. debate of mind vs body

23. Do you think we conceptualize the world
around us, through media technologies?
 From print media…
 Its time to turn over a new leaf
 Her story is written in my heart
 His life is an open book
 From electronic, filmic media
 I just had a flashback
 My mind is out of focus
 He has a photographic memory
 From the computer medium
 My mental software no longer works
 I cant quite retrieve the memory
 I haven’t yet processed what he said
 We see our media as extensions of our mental selves…

24. Advertising
 Most exciting and effective in modern signifying order
 Unlimited possibilities
 Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams. Their
weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness,
pride, desire , ignorance..

25. What is advertisement
 Any type or form of public announcement or
representation intended to promote the sale od specific
commodities or services.
 It is no longer just the servant of commercial interests. It
has become a strategy adopted by anyone in society who
wants to persuade people to do something, e.g. to
endorse a political candidate, to support a cause ….
 It is closely linked to marketing science. Extensive and
expensive surveys are conducted to determine the
potential acceptance of products or services before they
are advertised.

26. Advertising techniques
 Two main techniques to embed advertising in to
social mindset are
1. Positioning
Placing or targeting of a product for the right
people.
(Cheap vs expensive mobile)
2. Image creation
Fashioning a Personality for product with which a
particular type of consumer can identify. (NEXT
cola)

27. MYTHOLOGIZATION
 Strategy of imbuing brand names, logos, product
design, ads and commercials intentionally with
some myth meaning
e.g. the quest for beauty, McDonalds LOGO
The advertisers are quite adept at setting foot into
the same subconscious regions of psychic
experience that were once explored only by
philosophers, artists or religious thinkers.

28. Creating a signification system
 To create a personality for a product, advertisers construct a signification
system for it.
 1. Brand Names
 Names referring to actual manufacturer (sana safina, HSY, kylie)
 Names referring to fictitious personality (wendy)
 Names constructed as hyperbole (superfresh, ultralite)
 Names constructed as combination of words (Nesfruita)
 Names designed to show what the product can do (Easy off, one wipe, )
 Names designed what can be accomplished with the product (close up, no
sweat deodorant)

29.  2. Logos
Designed to generate same kinds of connotative
signification system for a product through visual
modality.
APPLE…forbidden knowledge
 Logos are not concealed anymore
Ralph Lauren's polo horseman, Lacoste’s Alligator

30. Ad compaigns
 The systematic creation of a series of slightly different
ads based on the same theme, characters, jingles etc.
 Surf excel, dagh tu achay hotay hain.
 Pepsi (cricketers and pop singers)
cooption
 The most effective strategy of advertising is not only to
keep up with the times but to coopt them.

31. Social Impacts of the Media
 We live in a world ruled by fictions of every
kind….(mass merchandising, advertising,
politics)…..For the writer in particular it is less
and less necessary for him to invent the fictional
content of his novel. The fiction is already there.
The writer’s task is to invent the reality.
(J.G. Ballard1930)

32. Blurring the lines between fiction and
reality….

33. Impact of mediation on people
 Habernas, Barthes and Baudrillard and others blamed
media for causing everything from street violence and
family breakups to philosophical nihilism.
 Juvenilization
Trend of staying younger and wrinkle free for long time.

34. The Hypodermic Needle Theory (HNT)
 Specifically studies the impacts of Media critically.
 Based typically on content analysis
 Media content no longer just mirrors cultural values but,
rather, largely shapes them.
 Media can directly influence human behavior just like
hypodermic needle.
 Example: Junk food phenomenon vs ultra slim body image.
Result is Anorexia nervosa, Bulimia

35. Censorship on media??
 Media moguls always find ways around measures of
censorship.
Example: cigarette advertising
 Culture Jam (2000) by Kalle Lasn
A persuasive case against the globalization of consumerist
culture. (cigarettes, alcohol, soda drinks, junk food, fashion
and cosmetics)
 Lasn has issued a MEDIA MANIFESTO with five main
resolutions that culture jammers are determined to
maintain.
 (pg 212 of understanding media semiotics)

36. Semiotic perspective
 All media are basically specific signifiers__i.e.
physical systems with properties that allow
people to encode or represent the same kind of
signified in particular ways. Differences among
the media are, therefore, more often than not
differences in the ‘physics’ of representation,
rather than differences in content.

37. Semiotic perspective
 Semiotic analysis of media text will wary, first and
foremost, according to the type of text.
1. A text X, whose meaning, Y is transparently obvious, the
analysis can be shown as straight line
X-----------------------------------------------------------------Y
2. A second kind of text X which meaning Y is determined in
a roundabout spiral fashion by taking into account historical
factors, intertextuality etc.
Y
X

38. 3. A third kind of text X in which its meaning is Y is accessed
in a back and forth, zig zag fashion by comparing its features
with the features of other texts.
X Y Y

39. Conclusion….
what is interesting is not always what something
means, but rather how it is represented.

40. Class comments…