Communicators face the challenge of communicating in a manner that from an audience’s perspective makes sense, seems relevant and interesting, and thus has the intended effect. By focusing on the message content and the reception process, semiotics provides a framework and tools to be used when creating communication content for various communication genres.

Media semiotics aims at acquiring knowledge and skills for recognizing and interpreting signs and sign systems that operate in the media context. Media semiotics thus becomes a prerequisite for a deeper understanding of the media communication process, its stratification, and interconnection in the mass media landscape. The course focuses on finding equivalences and cooperation between signs, on analysis of sign systems that operate in the media discourse.

At the end of the course students will be able to:

• Analyze communication/media genres using the theories of semiotics;

• Apply the theories of semiotics in designing: contemporary media content codes in the context of journalistic genres/mass & social media advertising.

The course will focus on theories of semiotics to be used for analyzing media communication and applied in the creation of specific communication materials. These theories will be applied in analyzing different genres of existing mass media communication materials from a variety of contexts as well as in creating new media communication materials.