Special issue: Social media as semiotic technology
Social media technology has become ubiquitous in modern life. Take as an example, the role of social media in the mundane routine of waiting for the bus. People may take a picture of a funny bird a...
Studying social media as semiotic technology: a social semiotic multimodal framework
How do we study social media technology? While social semiotics provides an extensive toolkit for analysing multimodal texts and semiotic practices, the study of social media as semiotic technology poses a significant challenge to existing research methodologies. In this article, we present a social semiotic framework that allows us to describe in analytical details the multimodal meaning potentials offered by digital social media technology and connect these to multimodal text-making and semiotic practices while underscoring the role of technology. Our framework is organized around seven interrelated and inherently informed dimensions: (1) multimodality, (2) practice, (3) the social, (4) m…