Visual Communication Online
Social semiotics examines the meaning of images, signs, symbols, and text, and how they are used to communicate in different cultural and social settings. It is divided into 3 categories, representational, interactive, and compositional. This study originated by multiple scholars including, Charles Sanders Pierce and Ferdinand de Saussure who theorized about semiotics. Michael Halliday, with the help of Gunther Kress, further developed this idea into what is known as social semiotics today (Long and He 2021). Social Semiotics is important because it analyzes the connection between communication and social and cultural situations. It helps further understand how different social, cultural, and political situations can influence communication by analyzing the meaning of said images, text, etc. In social semiotics, the "rules" are considered to be codes, which "convey meaning" (Long and He 2021). In semiotics, the most important things to note is not the symbols or im...
