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id

Jurnal Komunikasi Massa

Vol. 1, No. 1, Juli 2007, 60-74

Applying Semiotic Analysis to

Social Data in Media Studies

Pamela Nilan

Introduction
Semiotics is one of the newest social science modes of analysis and
generates one of the most interdisciplinary frameworks of applied research.
Semiotic analysis is used in media and cultural studies, communications,
linguistics, literary and film studies, psychology, history, sociology, art theory
and architecture. The principle object of investigation in semiotic analysis in
media and communication studies has been the ‘text’: – for example,
newspapers, films, television shows, websites. The techniques for applying
semiotic analysis to texts are well-established and relatively familiar. This
paper is concerned with a further question – whether it is possible to apply a
semiotic analysis to social data in media and communication studies, and
how it can be done. It is argued that the semiotic analysis of social data in
media studies requires not only a working knowledge of the field of
semiotics, but a relevant postmodern definition of the term ‘discourse’, so
that a link can be recognised between the micro-level of social action, and
the macro-level of society, culture, the economy and political ideology. It is
necessary to set the theoretical stage so that the discussion can proceed.

A. Early Semiotics
All human communication is made up of signs, working together to
make meaning through the process of semiosis. Semiotics is the study of signs
and signifying practices, bringing together the work of linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure and language pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. It is argued that
there is no inherent or necessary relationship between that which carries the
meaning (the signifier) and the actual meaning which is carried (the signified).
Peirce's semiotic paradigm (1934) distinguished between three kinds of
signs: icon, index and symbol. An icon is a meaning which is based upon similar-

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Pamela Nilan – Applying Semiotics Analysis to Social Data in Media Studies

ity or appearance (for example, similarity in shape, colour, sound etc). An

index is a meaning generated through a cause and effect relationship (for
example, a weathervane generates meaning from wind direction). A symbol
carries meaning in a purely arbitrary way - the way natural language carries
meaning. For example, almost the word same symbol/word - ‘mobil(e)’ -
means a car in Indonesian and a cellular phone in English.
Saussure (1959) made a famous distinction between langue (language)
and parole (speech). Langue refers to the system of rules and conventions
which is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users; parole refers to its
use in particular instances. Saussure focused on langue rather than parole. To
Saussure what mattered most were the underlying structures and rules of a
semiotic system rather than specific performances or practices of their use.
Saussure's approach was to study the system ‘synchronically’ as if it were
frozen in time (like a photograph) - rather than ‘diachronically’ - in terms of
its evolution over time (like a film). Structuralist cultural theorists sub-
sequently adopted this Saussurean priority, focusing on the representation
and function of social and cultural phenomena within semiotic systems.

B. Later Developments
Contemporary Saussurian semioticians still divide the sign up between
the signifier and the signified, maintaining that there is an essentially arbitrary
relationship between the two. An important concept in semiotics is that one
sign or set of signs can take the place of some other sign or set of signs in a
theoretically infinite process. If ‘infinite semiosis’ did not take place, then the
media would run out of signs with which to carry meaning, and that would
be the end of media as a form of communication. The process by which one
sign is linked to another through the deferral of meaning is often represent-
ed as a semiotic chain, or chain of semiosis.
For the representation of women in texts this might be:
girl virgin bride mother woman female whore prostitute
witch and so on …
Used in current media and communications research, semiotics is a
type of social description and analysis which places specific emphasis upon
understanding and exploration of the patterns of signs and symbols in texts,
what they mean and how they are used. Textual semiotics examines familiar
and everyday settings and the particular patterns, relationships, ideas and
beliefs that characterise the ways that social and cultural meanings are habit-
ually made from texts. The most common aim is to grasp the symbolism of
everyday media texts in popular culture - how people might read and under-
stand symbols and signs, and thereby make meanings from words, sounds,
pictures and body language in texts. Some refer to this as ‘deconstruction’ –
a term coined by Jacques Derrida. Derrida was also the author of the idea

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that meanings are referred on endlessly through chains of signifiers in the

process of différance – the infinite deferral of fixed meaning (Derrida 1981).

Major Theorists
Leading modern semiotic theorists include Roland Barthes, Algirdas
Greimas, Umberto Eco and Julia Kristeva. Semiotics began to become a
major cultural studies approach in the 1960s, after the translated essays of
Roland Barthes were published in English as Mythologies (1957).

A. Roland Barthes
Barthes stated that: semiology aims to take in any system of signs,
whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, ob-
jects, and the complex associations of all of these, which form the content
of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not
languages, at least systems of signification (Barthes 1967: 9).
The distinction between denotation and connotation is an important
basis for Barthes’ semiotic theory. He claims that when we read signs and
sign systems, we can distinguish between different kinds of messages. Deno-
tation is the “literal or obvious meaning” or the “first-order signifying sys-
tem”. Connotation refers to “second-order signifying systems”, additional cul-
tural meanings we make from a given sign, where the context often alters
the meaning. In other words, the same signifier can point to a number of
different signified meanings depending on the situation or setting.
In his book S/Z, Barthes further developed further his ideas of de-
notation and connotation. He argued that denotation is associated with
closure and singularity of meaning. In contrast, connotation represents the
principle of opening up the text to all kinds of interpreted meanings and
readings. From this, Barthes developed his idea that there are two types of
semiotic systems: closed and open semiotic systems. This allows us to
distinguish between closed and open texts in media analysis. An example of
a closed text is the Ramayana Ballet, for example. It always has to be
performed the same way, and the traditional audience already has all the
meanings. The overall meaning outcome of the text is always predictable
and more or less the same. An example of an open text is a live comedy
show where there is no fixed format, and the audience cannot predict what
is going to happen. There is no “correct” way of interpreting the meaning of
open texts; on the contrary, they are available for all kinds of readings. Some
people will make a negative meaning from the comedy, for example. Others
will make a positive meaning. Some people may not find the comedy funny
at all. Closed and open texts serve different cultural purposes and both are
valuable.

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B. Jean Baudrillard
In the early 1970s, French theorist Baudrillard argued that in late mo-
dernity the symbolic dimension of material commodities had become much
more important for the circulation of commodities in society. For Baudri-
llard, sign value is the result of the development of the fetish character of
the commodity. Sign value is that value that gives status when it is con-
sumed or spent. Sign value, then, is involved in the production of differ-
ence; for example, social status difference, or the dominance of political
elites (Baudrillard 1998).
Baudrillard (1983;1987) coined the term simulacra, implying that what
we consume from the media (especially audiovisual material) becomes just
as real, if not more real, than what it apparently refers to. Separating the re-
presentation (the simulacra) from the real is not always easy in the age of
mass media. For example, some dedicated television viewers are more in
touch with celebrities and sinetron than with the people around them. Baudri-
llard maintains that the hyperrealist carnival of the media is at the centre of
contemporary culture worldwide. Only the unreal seems real, and this gives
rise to conditions of ‘hyperreality’ where everything is representation.
Baudrillard maintained that late twentieth century culture was charac-
erised by the phenomenon of ‘hyperreality:
By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real,
nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation
of all referentials ... it is no longer a question of imitation, nor
duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs
of the real for the real, that is to say an operation of deterring every
real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable,
perfectly descriptive machine (Baudrillard 1983: 2).
Baudrillard’s hyperrealist world is ultimately devoid of things. Only
representations surround us. In hyperrealist worlds the point is that we be-
ome increasingly distant from an originary materiality as objects disappear in
the play of simulacra. In such a world material objects and human subjects
disappear, leaving only signs without meaning.

C. Stuart Hall
The adoption of semiotics in Britain was influenced by its promin-
ence in the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)
at the University of Birmingham while the centre was under the direction of
the neo-Marxist sociologist Stuart Hall.
According to Hall, all images and texts are both encoded and decoded.
They are encoded in the production process and in their placement within a
certain cultural setting. They are decoded by the viewers/readers/consum-

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ers. Hall (1980) maintains there are three positions the viewers can adopt as
decoders:
1. A dominant-hegemonic reading: - viewers/readers/consumers identify
with, and receive the dominant message of an image or text (such as a te-
levision show) in an unquestioning manner.
2. A negotiated reading: - viewers/readers/consumers negotiate an inter-
pretation from the text and its meanings which may not be that of the
producers.
3. An oppositional reading: - viewers/readers/consumers take an opposi-
tional position, either by completely disagreeing with the ideological po-
sition embodied in a text or rejecting it altogether - for example by ignor-
ing it.
Another of Hall’s principal concerns is with representation. Hall sees
representation as an act of reconstruction rather than reflection (1986). For
example, the image of the woman on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine
doesn’t reflect what that woman really looks like. The image reconstructs
something; but it isn’t simply a woman. The surface meaning is an attractive
woman, but the image was constructed to sell a specific kind of life-style
that in turn demands the detailed use of commercial products and other
commodities. Behind the image lies an entire world of beliefs, ideas, values,
behaviors, and relationships that must be decoded and laid at the doorstep
of transnational corporations, advertisers, cultural entrepreneurs and myth-
makers. Representation is an act of ideological (re)construction that serves
the specific interests of those who control the media, and their driving
interest is always profit or power.

Semiotics and Discourse Analysis

Hall maintained that his concept of representation should be prod-
uctively used to critique sign-systems within cultural and social texts. The
idea of discourse, however, is generally used to critique larger swaths of cul-
ture. Although the term discourse originally referred to dialogue or convers-
ation, it now has a much wider poststructuralist and postmodern meaning, con-
nected with the operation of power as knowledge.

A. Foucault: Discourse – Knowledge - Power

For Foucault discourses are: “Practices that systematically form the
objects of which they speak (…) discourses are not about objects; they do
not identify objects, they constitute them and in the practice of doing so
conceal their own intervention” (Foucault 1977: 49).
Discourse is a concept that explores relationships between social
power and socially produced knowledges, and how these knowledges as
power bring human subjects into certain relations with each other. It refers

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to the socially constructed hierarchies of meanings, valuations and under-

standings which circulate in a given socio-historical context and inform both
social practices and experiences of the self:
Discourses in Foucault’s work are ways of constituting knowledge,
together with the social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations
which inhere in such knowledges and the relations between them (Weedon
1987:108).

B. Hall: Discourse as Representation

A discourse for Stuart Hall “is a group of statements which provide a
language for talking about - i.e. a way of representing - a particular kind of
knowledge about a topic” (1996: 201). Discourses are produced through
language and practices. They are ways of talking about and acting towards
an idea or group of people. One of Hall’s most powerful insights concern-
ing discourses is that “anyone deploying a discourse must position them-
selves as if they were the subject of the discourse” (1996: 202, emphasis in
original).
The example that Hall gives us is the discourse of the West. Ever
since the distinction between the East and the West was made, the West has
been seen as more advanced, more modern, and so on. This is in fact one of
the reasons the distinction was made - to talk about the West as superior. In
this discourse the West is the model toward which the developing world
must strive. This discourse also places an obligation upon the West to assist
the developing world in the move up the global ladder. The power of dis-
course means that in order to talk about the relationship between the West
and other nations you must adopt the terms of the discourse. For example,
any time we use the terms “third world nation,” “modernization,” or “glo-
balization,” we are positioning ourselves within core-periphery discourse
and implying western superiority. For us to be able to talk about world re-
lations without invoking belief in western supremacy, we would have to
come up with alternative discourse for talking about the world.

C. Discourse and Semiotics

It is clear that the postmodern concept of discourse allows us to fo-
cus on the way knowledge, language, and culture is used, rather than any
idea of ultimate truth or falseness. That being the case, “the very language
we use to describe the so-called facts” constructs “what is true and what is
false” (Hall 1996, p. 203). Knowledge and power are always intertwined.
Knowledge, including from media sources, is produced through discursive
practice - ‘in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled,
selected, organised, and redistributed’ (Foucault 1982: 216) in order to
produce certain knowledges that regulate the conduct of citizens.

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Knowledge and culture simultaneously state the condition of the

world and reproduce political beliefs and values. The concept of discourse is
essential for locating any task of semiotic analysis within its socio-cultural
and historical context. Without the concept of discourse, social semiotics
has no real meaning.

Contemporary Semiotics
Returning to the history of the development of semiotics, Volosinov
(1973: 21) reversed the Saussurean priority of langue over parole: ‘The sign is
part of organized social intercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it,
reverting to a mere physical artifact’. The meaning of a sign is nowadays
understood not simply in its relationship to other signs within the system of
signifiers like the semiotic chain above, but rather in the social context of its
use.

A. The Mediation of Social Change

Semiotics is now a field of study involving many different theoretical
stances and methodological tools. Semiotics involves the study not only of
‘signs’ in everyday speech, but of anything which ‘stands for’ something else.
In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures
and objects. Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as
part of semiotic ‘sign systems’ (such as a medium or genre), and are thereby
concerned not only with communication but also with the construction and
maintenance of reality. In analysing media we need to acknowledge the real-
world transformations involved in processes of mediation. When we use a
medium or form of media for any purpose, its use becomes part of that
purpose. In using any medium, to some extent we serve its ‘purposes’ as
well as it serving ours. When we engage with media we both act and are
acted upon, use and are used. So it is possible for new meanings to be
generated, especially through social interaction with others, which is a
process of mediation in itself.

B. The Semiosphere
Thinking in ‘ecological’ terms about the interaction of different
semiotic structures and sign systems led the Russian cultural semiotician
Yuri Lotman (1990: 124-125) to coin the term ‘semiosphere’ to refer to ‘the
whole semiotic space of the culture in question’. Later John Hartley (1996:
106) commented that ‘there is more than one level at which one might
identify a semiosphere - at the level of a single national or linguistic culture,
for instance, or of a larger unity such as “the West”, right up to “the
species”’. The concept of a semiosphere, which is really a formation of
discourses, or a discursive formation, offers a more unified and dynamic

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vision of semiosis than the study of a text or mediated human practice as if

it existed in a social and cultural vacuum.

C. Social Semiotics
Most contemporary semioticians give priority to the historicity and
social context of signs and systems of signification, which are not fixed but
are constantly changing over time. Seeking to establish a wholeheartedly
‘social’ semiotics, Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress (1988: 1) declare that
‘the social dimensions of semiotic systems are so intrinsic to their nature
and function that the systems cannot be studied in isolation’. While formerly
the emphasis was on studying sign systems - language, literature, cinema,
architecture, music, and so on - conceived of as mechanisms that generate
messages, what is now being examined is the work performed through
them. It is this work or activity which constitutes and/or transforms the
codes, at the same time as it constitutes and transforms the individuals using
the codes, performing the work; the audience or consumers who are,
therefore, the subjects of semiosis.
This is a semiotics concerned with stressing the social aspect of sig-
nification, its practical, aesthetic, or ideological use in interpersonal com-
munication where meaning is construed as semantic value produced through
culturally shared codes. Semiotics is important because it teaches us that
reality itself is a system of signs. Studying semiotics can assist us to become
more aware of social reality as a construction and of the roles played by
ourselves and others in constructing it. Meaning is not ‘transmitted’ to us -
we actively create it according to a complex interplay of codes or convent-
ions of which we are normally unaware. Through the study of semiotics we
become aware that these signs and codes are normally transparent and dis-
guise our task in ‘reading’ them. In defining realities, signs serve ideological
functions. Deconstructing and contesting the realities of signs can reveal
whose realities are privileged and whose are suppressed.

D. A New Paradigm
In 1997 Fairclough and Wodak distinguished three broad domains of
social life in which media discourse significantly constitutes society and
culture: representations of the world, social relations between people, and
people’s social and personal identities. By 2004 it was argued in the
influential journal Social Semiotics that we need to move beyond the obsession
with analysing static texts to a new active paradigm of semiotics for re-
searching media-related social phenomena:
The proposed new paradigm is disarmingly simple: it treats media as
the open set of practices relating to, or oriented around, media (…) The
new paradigm decentres the media text for a reason: to sidestep the

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insoluble problems over how to prove “media effects” (…) hidden assumpt-
ions about “media effects” abound in media analysis and everyday talk
about media. Indeed, they are hard to avoid if you start from the text itself
(…) Why else study the detailed structure of a media text as your primary
research focus unless you can plausibly claim that those details make a dif-
ference to wider social processes? But it is exactly this that is difficult to
show (Couldry 2004: 117).
Couldry says the question we ought to be asking is: ‘what, quite simp-
ly, are people doing in relation to media across a whole range of situations
and contexts?’ (2004: 119). This leads me to the analytical section of this
paper. How can we apply a critical semiotic analysis to FGD data where the
discussion is about the effects of media?

Applying Semiotic Analysis to Social Data

A. The Data
Excerpt from Mixed Focus Group Discussion about the Effects of
Mass Media on Young People (Central Mosque, Makassar, January 2002)
1. Dewi (19): Maybe …mungkin kayak, pengertian modernisasi itu
di sini yang disalahpahami oleh remaja ya, mungkin banyak remaja
yang memikir bahwa modernisasi itu yang misalnya cara gaulnya
kayak yang ada di TV, kayak cara hidup yang begitu yang
dikatakan modern. Namun yang saya tahu kan modernnya kita,
modernisasi adalah disiplin, on time, saling hormat menghormati
yang kayak gitu namun yang dilihat remaja misalnya mungkin
karena pengaruh informasi yang diterima sehingga pengertian
modern mereka itu seperti itu.
Maybe…like .., the meaning of modernisation has been misunderstood by
teenagers you know. Maybe most think that modernization is, for example,
the free way of mixing like what we see on TV, that’s what they think a
modern way of life is. But that’s not our way of being modern. Modernisation
[for us] is discipline, being punctual, respecting others, these sorts of things.
But like, for teenagers, maybe because they are influenced by the information
they get [from media], that forms their understanding of modernization.
2. Alharizin (20): Saya kira mass media atau media masa itu sangat
besar pengaruhnya terhadap prilaku generasi muda khususnya itu
sebenarnya media itu sangat banyak manfaatnya, cuma disisi lain
dia juga punya dampak negatif terutama pada tingkah laku
generasi muda ya contohnya ketika mereka melihat tingkah laku
yang mereka anggap modern itu terkadang mencontoh dalam hal
prilaku. Celananya dirobek-robek, atau rambut gondrong. Itu
mungkin karena orang barat itu mereka punya rambut merah jadi

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mereka juga jadi merah gitu. Kulit kan hitam. Jadi saya kira itu
tetap ada negatif efek dan positif efek. Jadi seharusnya kita yang
berpendidikan, kita harus memfilter yang mana yang baik dan kita
tinggalkan yang negatifnya, begitu.
I think mass media has major effects on the behaviour of the young generation
despite the fact that there are also advantages. On the other side there are de-
finitely some negative effects that impact on the young generation. For example
when they see some behaviours that they think are modern they imitate those
behaviours. They tear their pants, or grow their hair long. And probably be-
cause westerners have blonde hair they dye their hair blonde, even though their
skin is dark. So I think there are always both negative and positive effects.
Those of us who are educated have to filter the good parts and leave the ne-
gative ones behind.
3. Bachtiar (19): Saya kira seandainya saya pemerintah, itu saya ha-
rus betul-betul memberi bimbingan dan penyuluhan melalui tele-
visi. Kalau ada warga saya, karena saya pemerintah, supaya sadar.
Karena saya lihat sebagian besar ya, most of the indonesian people
have television. Sehingga otomatis itu pemerintah yang memiliki
stasiun-stasiun itu bisa menyiarkan hal-hal yang baik kepada ma-
syarakatnya. Terutama bimbingan-bimbingan mengenai prilaku
orang yang tidak baik mereka punya ahlak. Jadi siaran TV sekarang
terutama sinetron yang dibilang bagus, itu sebenarnya banyak yang
tidak layak untuk disiarkan. Jadi sebagai pemerintah yang bijak se-
andainya itu harus memfilter sinetron-sinetron yang ada. Ini yang
layak untuk masyarakat, ini yang tidak. Jadi yang tidak layak itu
jangan disiarkan.
I think if I were the government I would give guidence and supervision through
television. I would make sure the people of my nation developed a good aware-
ness. Because I know that most Indonesian people have television. If the go-
vernment owned all the stations they could broadcast material to the people,
especially guidance for good behaviour and morals. You know, the high rating
programs on TV nowadays, especially sinetron, have some scenes which should
not be allowed to be broadcast. So a wise government would censor sinetron on
TV. They would decide which scenes are good for society. Scenes that are not
good for society should not be broadcast.
4. Rosdiana (20): Menurut saya mungkin saya tidak sependapat
dengan saudara Bachtiar. Mas media televisi itu memiliki dampak
positif dan negatif. Saya kira tergantung dari individu-individu ma-
sing-masing ya. Kita bisa menarik manfaat dari sinetron. Mungkin
karena kita lihat sekarang ya, sinetron di Indonesia ini sering
menampilkan gaya-gaya hidup yang serba mewah. Saya kira ini
juga bisa menjadi motivasi bagi kita. Terkadang ya, kita sebagai

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remaja, kita sering berangan-angan bagaimana kita bisa seperti

mereka, memang individualnya mengambil positif efek dari film
tersebut maka dia otomatis menambah motivasinya untuk belajar
supaya bisa menjadi orang sukses juga. Tapi kalau dia hanya ber-
angan-angan tanpa ada usaha, inilah dampak negatif dari film-film
tsb. Dan saya yakin bahwa segala situasi punya dampak positif dan
punya dampak negatif. Apapun itu.
I think I don’t agree with Bachtiar’s ideas. As mass media, TV has both po-
sitive and negative effects. I think it depends on each and every individual. We
can learn something from a TV sinetron. Maybe because TV sinetron now-
adays mostly feature a glamorous and wealthy life style. I think this can mo-
tivate us. Sometimes, as teenagers, we have a fantasy about becoming like
those people. So as individuals we can get a positive effect from sinetron like
that. Obviously it can increase our motivation to study hard so that we can be-
come successful people like that. But if it only remains a fantasy, without any
effort on our part, then there can be a negative effect from shows of any kind.

B. A Simple Semiotic Analysis

Let’s move from a simple to a complex critical analysis of this
transcript. Firstly, if we stretch the semiotic metaphor and consider the
whole excerpt above as a single sign, the signified here is the topic of the
effect of mass media on Indonesian teenagers. Each person’s response to
the FGD topic is then a different signifier which points to that topic.
Obviously such a simple analysis does not tell us much. We need to
consider the detail in each person’s account. Once we do this though, we
will become aware of the internal semiosis of the FGD excerpt. As each
person speaks in turn, they frame their account against what the previous
person said. The chain of signifiers (themes) would then look like this:

Dewi: free social mixing

!
Alharizin: behave like westerners
!
Bachtiar: government must censor media
!
Rosdiana: but sinetron can motivate us

This allows us to see that the semiosis of meaning in the FGD dis-
cussion moving from Dewi’s comments to Bachtiar’s comments is logically
heading for ‘closure’ (Barthes 1967), until Rosdiana’s contradictory com-
ment about the positive effects of sinetron ‘opens up’ the play of possible
meanings again. This is a very common pattern in human conversations.

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C. Applying the Concepts of Encoding and Decoding

We may extend the analysis so far using Hall’s paradigm of semiotics.
If we recall, Hall claims all images and texts are both encoded and decoded.
Using this idea, we may note that Dewi firstly claims Indonesian teenagers
wrongly decode the message about modernity in the mass media. Alharizin
takes this further claiming that teenagers not only decode the images and
texts of the mass media in the wrong way, but mirror this error of inter-
pretation in their behaviour. He also implies that western influences encode
Indonesian mass media, so in this sense the offensive decoding of mass media
messages by teenagers is understandable. Bachtiar takes this logic even fur-
ther, arguing that the Indonesian government needs to take full censorship
control of the encoding process for the mass media, so that no negative deco-
ding by teenagers can possibly take place. Finally, Rosdiana argues against the
determinist idea that teenagers always decode mass media wrongly, claiming
that it is possible to decode even sinetron in a beneficial way.
We may recall that Hall maintains there are three positions for decod-
ing mass media: 1) a dominant-hegemonic reading; 2) a negotiated reading,
and 3) an oppositional reading. It is easy to see that Rosdiana is arguing for
a negotiated reading of mass media on the part of teenagers, and thereby
implying she herself habitually makes a negotiated reading of mass media.
The other three FGD participants all indicate by their comments that they
themselves typically make an oppositional reading of mass media, because they
disagree with the ideological position embodied in the text. However, they
argue that Indonesian teenagers make a dominant-hegemonic reading of mass
media. That is, anak remaja identify with, and receive, the dominant images
of television in an unquestioning manner.
D. Discourse Analysis
We now need to build up to the wider, more complex level of dis-
course analysis to address the following important questions – Who are
these young people in the FGD? Why are they talking like this about the
mass media? What kinds of knowledge are they reflecting and constructing
in their talk about Indonesian teenagers and mass media? As stated above,
discourse is a concept that explores relationships between social power and
socially produced knowledges, and how these knowledges as power bring
human subjects into certain relations with each other. It refers to the socially
constructed hierarchies of meanings, valuations and understandings which
circulate in a given socio-historical context and inform both social practices
and experiences of the self.
So first off, the four young people in the focus group are both ex-
pressing and reflecting some readily identifiable discourses in their dialogue
about the effect of the mass media on Indonesian teenagers. The four young
people were interviewed in a discussion room at the Central Mosque com-

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plex in Makassar. They were all devout Muslim youth. So they share the
Islamist discourse of condemning secular (westernised) Indonesian popular
culture. They also articulate an apparently shared discourse of concern about
the moral danger to Indonesian teenagers posed by the mass media. This is
not just a Muslim discourse, but one expressed by the government, poli-
ticians and journalists, and the religious leaders of other faiths in Indonesia.
Certainly the first three speakers talk in a very similar way about the mass
media and teenagers, indicating shared discursive subject positions on the
effect of mass media as negative.
The relationship between social power and socially produced know-
ledges in the enactment of discourse in dialogue is best illustrated by Bach-
tiar’s implication that the government should take full censorship control of
the Indonesian mass media – a very forceful operation of authoritarian po-
wer. The seizing of full mass media control in a country usually only hap-
pens in conditions of revolution and coup d’etat, not in a constitutional de-
mocracy. But we may note that Bachtiar imagines his control over the mass
media will be benevolent and protective – what Foucault calls ‘pastoral
power’ – in accord with Bachtiar’s ideal vision (expressed elsewhere in the
FGD) of Indonesia under full shari’a law – an Islamic state. It is this know-
ledge/power nexus that informs his expression of discourse on the negative
effect of the mass media and protection of the young. At the level of so-
ciety, a discourse can be described as a “group of statements which provide
a language for talking about - i.e. a way of representing - a particular kind of
knowledge about a topic” (Hall 1996: 201). At a mundane level discourse
manifests as ways of talking about and acting towards an idea or group of
people. In the comments of the first three FGD participants, the shared
discourse about mass media is that it is dangerous and needs to be con-
trolled. While the shared discourse about teenagers is that they are naïve,
passive and impressionable and so need to be protected from the mass
media.
Seen this way, Rosdiana’s comments really do reference quite a dif-
ferent (reverse) discourse, even though she shares the same approximate
discursive subject position as her three friends. She is implying that Indo-
nesian teenagers can benefit from some consumerist, hedonistic mass media
messages to motivate themselves towards upward social and economic mo-
bility. Her discourse about the mass media then, is that even shallow sinetron
can serve a hidden useful social purpose as a valuable cultural resource for
the positive construction of identity. Her discourse about teenagers implies
that they are impressionable, but this can be positive because they can use
their imagination productively to construct ideas about a better life. The
FGD transcript above then, demonstrates the historicity and social context
of signs, systems of signification and discourses that inform the meaning-
making process of semiosis are not fixed but constantly changing over time.

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Pamela Nilan – Applying Semiotics Analysis to Social Data in Media Studies

Conclusion
This paper has traced some key trends in semiotic analysis relevant to
studies of media and communication. Increasingly in media studies we seek
to know not only the effects of media on audiences, but we seek to invest-
igate what people themselves think about contemporary media and possible
effects. Accordingly this paper has sought to demonstrate the application of
an expanded semiotic analysis to social data in media studies. The analysis
above does not represent a full analysis of the FGD transcript excerpt pro-
vided, as this could obviously be taken much further. It does indicate
though that ‘the social dimensions of semiotic systems are so intrinsic to
their nature and function that the systems cannot be studied in isolation’
(Hodge and Kress 1988: 1). We can learn a great deal about the ‘effects’ of
media by asking people about media effects, and treating their responses in
the same critical way that we have previously treated media texts. In short,
semiotic analysis of social data relevant to media studies can reveal how
knowledge as power brings human subjects into certain relations with each
other through engagement with the media. Through analysing how dis-
courses operate in talk about media, we can better understand the socially
constructed hierarchies of meanings, valuations and comprehensions that
circulate in the early twenty-first century, and inform both social practices
and experiences of the self in relation to media.

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