Scheda Articolo

#WhatWeThinkOfTelevision. Twitter and the semiotic analysis of a television programme

in Versus n. 122, Empirical Research in Semiotics, pp.101-121

Abstract (italiano)

An episode of a television talk show called Announo is analyzed here, together with the data collected on Twitter, during its transmission, under the hashtag #Announo. The aim is to reflect on how Semiotics should deal with actual interpretations of a text while trying to find out and to describe its meaning. The idea is that both the programme and the tweets are the expressions of some cultural models of a collective value that people use to conceive topics like how a television broadcaster and its personnel should talk to their audience about the world, which kind of issues should be treated on TV, how television language should be used for this purpose, which kind of images can be shown, etc. These cultural models, together with the way they are used, are the meaning of the programme itself and they can be inferred by mixing a semiotic desk analysis of the same programme with the analysis of that particular kind of text which is produced by its audience on Twitter