Visual Communication Online
Visual communication online can be assessed through the lens of Social Semiotics. Social Semiotics is a term coined by linguistic theorist, Michael Halliday, in 1978 and is based on the premise that the creation and interpretation of meaning from language and symbols—verbal and nonverbal communication—cannot be separated from its social context. In other words, Social Semiotics is important because it can help predict how a certain communication will be interpreted by a particular culture or society. There are three major concepts associated with Visual Social Semiotics— representational, interactive, and compositional meaning—which can then be broken down into further classifications. Representational meaning is communicated by the people, places, or things portrayed in an image or advertisement and can come in two forms— narrative (participant “doing” something) or conceptual (participant “being” something) (Jewitt & Oyama, 2012). An interactive meaning refers to how an im...
