The Semiotics of Social Media Platforms

Abstract

Social media platforms are not simply technical tools for exchanging information. They have become genuine semiotic environments in which a large part of contemporary human life now unfolds. Yet most existing theoretical frameworks are ill-equipped to handle objects of this kind. Structural semiotics, classical media theory, and computational approaches each illuminate something real, but none, taken alone, accounts for all dimensions that platforms simultaneously impose. This chapter addresses that gap by proposing semiopragmatics as the most adequate framework for analysing social media platforms at the level of meaning. The argument unfolds in three stages: the first establishes platforms as complex semiosic facts ; the second subjects the three dominant approaches to critical examination ; the third constructs the semiopragmatic framework in positive terms. Drawing on Peirce's phaneroscopic categories and the representamen-object-interpretant triad, the chapter demonstrates how platforms intervene at every level of the semiotic process.