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Semiotics of Mass Communication
Humanities & Social Sciences Program
Alicante, Spain
Dates: 9/4/19 - 12/21/19
Semiotics of Mass Communication
OVERVIEW
CEA CAPA Partner Institution: University of Alicante
Location: Alicante, Spain
Primary Subject Area: Communication
Instruction in: English
Transcript Source: Partner Institution
Course Details: Level 200
Recommended Semester Credits: 3
Contact Hours: 60
DESCRIPTION
Advertising is made of messages designed with the will to signify and communicate, and to reach its target audiences through media capable to do so. The science responsible for studying the mechanisms of meaning is semiotics, and the Semiotics of Mass Communication is an applied discipline that highlights the semiotic nature of advertising and allows it to be studied within the framework of mass communication messages. Advertising is inserted or placed throughout the entire social communication landscape, in a more overt or covert way, and establishes varied relationships with other genres, discourses and functions of mass communication. In this subject 1) some basic principles, tools and strategies of the semiotic analysis of mass communication messages are introduced and 2) the concrete analysis of massive messages such as photography, cinema, television and social networks is addressed and evaluated.
The Semiotics of Mass Communication must be sensitive to the new media ecology arising from social networks: mass communication has become a "mass self-communication" (Manuel Castells): it continues to be mass communication because it can potentially reach a global audience, such as certain videos that circulate on YouTube, or Instagram photos, or tweets or audios, which become viral and generate a large number of comments and reactions. But at the same time, it is self-communication, because one generates the message, defines the possible recipients and publishes it, or selects the contents of the networks that finds and decides to share. All this has undoubtedly modified and even disrupted not only communication, but the very concept of advertising: Facebook or Instagram profiles, or Twitter accounts, become personal brands, self-advertising, in which the private and the public, the personal and the professional mix. The course also critically addresses this new media ecology, its potentialities and its risks.
Course will consist of 60hrs of in class work and 90 hrs of independent work outside the classroom.
The Semiotics of Mass Communication must be sensitive to the new media ecology arising from social networks: mass communication has become a "mass self-communication" (Manuel Castells): it continues to be mass communication because it can potentially reach a global audience, such as certain videos that circulate on YouTube, or Instagram photos, or tweets or audios, which become viral and generate a large number of comments and reactions. But at the same time, it is self-communication, because one generates the message, defines the possible recipients and publishes it, or selects the contents of the networks that finds and decides to share. All this has undoubtedly modified and even disrupted not only communication, but the very concept of advertising: Facebook or Instagram profiles, or Twitter accounts, become personal brands, self-advertising, in which the private and the public, the personal and the professional mix. The course also critically addresses this new media ecology, its potentialities and its risks.
Course will consist of 60hrs of in class work and 90 hrs of independent work outside the classroom.