Semiotics Theory Of Mass Media

Under the surface of colorful, exciting, and the captivating exterior of mass media content lies deep, hidden machinery that works hard to overwhelm its audiences with equally deeply concealed messages, popularized and exhibited by the media owners. These messages influence their consumers personally and socially, eventually producing a culture which is highly impacted by the media. The purpose of this paper is to probe beneath the mass media surface and see how the theories of mass communication be applied to an analysis of media and its products, and examine the deeper meanings in the messages conveyed by the contents that the media produce.

Mass media are founded on the idea of mass production and mass distribution through the press, radio, television, video, cinema and internet. The basic functions performed by the mass media are as follows:

It is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology which is a subset of semiotic. This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.(en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics) Semiotics can be applied to anything. In other words, to all things which has meaning within a culture. Even within the mass media perspective, semiotic analysis can be applied to any media texts including magazine articles, posters and other ads, films cartoons, newspaper and television and radio programs and to the practices involved in creating and understanding such texts. A particular “sign” from a particular community or society may have a different meaning to the other. The study of semiotics helps the media in depicting the kind of message and the approach to use in producing and publishing a certain content or media products to their