Speaker
Description
Almost all events today are experienced as much through screens and platforms as in lived reality. Moreover, wars, pandemics, environmental disasters, and social upheavals, because of their stimulating and affective content, are mediated, circulated, and contested in the digital sphere, where images, texts, and symbols play a decisive role in shaping how societies understand and react to disruption. However, the digital environment is not a silent communicator of information and does not simply transmit information about crises and events. Rather, it transforms them, sometimes by algorithmic technological mechanisms, prioritizing certain narratives while silencing others, and often blurring the line between fact, spectacle, and misinformation.
In this paper, I examine how crises are constructed, communicated, and reframed through signs in the digital landscape, and how semiotic approaches can help us make sense of these processes. By examining how meaning is condensed into viral images, memes, and algorithmically promoted and inspired content, I argue that semiotic analysis can provide critical tools for understanding the cultural and political representations that mobilize empathy and action, or normalize violence or turn suffering into consumable spectacle.
The aim is not only interpretive but also practical, allowing us to uncover the hidden logics of crisis communication and to identify points where meaning can be shifted, resisted, or reimagined. In doing so, semiotics opens the possibility of using signs for conflict understanding and resolution, as well as embracing a more responsible and ethical approach to digital media communication.
| Keywords | semiotics of crisis, digital media, virtual world, crisis communication, representation, algorithmic mediation, misinformation, spectacle, meaning-making, empathy, ethical communication |
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| taulantsalihi@gmail.com |