Multimedia Semiotics

Massive changes are taking place in society surrounding the delivery of information to individuals and the way they process this information. At work, at home, and in schools, the Internet and the World Wide Web are altering the individual's work, his leisure time, her workplace, and their educational environments. All of these changes and their consequences have traditionally been investigated largely within the domain of sociology, semiotics, mass communication, and computer science. The perspective from cognitive psychology has been lacking. The purpose of this volume is to fill this gap. The focus of the book is the cognitive effects of the modern digital environment. In addition, questions are raised about what cognitive conditions must exist for adequately processing information in multimedia environments. Internet use routinely involves the exchange of factual information but also a large amount of information with an interpersonal character is communicated. A socio-psychological perspective is needed to understand both kinds of communication, also to be able to design appropriate support tools.

This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis.

This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic results interact with those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue.