Anagenesis: A framework for a gameful, playful and democratic future smart cities

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The pirate and the navy: Challenger brands and their utilization of counter-hegemonic ideology in identity communication

Challenger branding is a phenomenon that is gaining significant exposure in academia. However, most research on this branding approach relates to a practical or technical knowledge interest, ignoring the counter-hegemonic critique that exemplifies challenger branding. The critique that these brands base their identity on often shifts after they have been acquired into a hegemonic context, by joining a large corporation or becoming hegemonic brands themselves. This thesis aims to extend critical knowledge by connecting theories of ideology, hegemony, and brand communication to the identity construction of two challenger brands, The Body Shop and Innocent Drinks, and further explores the identity shift of the brands after their acquisition by L’Oréal and Coca-Cola. Counter-hegemony was found to be a pervasive tool activated through a number of signs for challenger identity construction. Further, challenger brand identity differed substantially before and after the challenger brands joined L’Oréal and Coca-Cola

Multisensory processing, affect and multimodal manipulation: A cognitive-semiotic empirical study of travel documentaries

Multisensory processing represents the mirror image of multimodal meaning-making, in that interpreting multimodal discourse predominantly requires multisensory processing, even when different modes rely on the same sensory channels (Khateb et al., 2002), for example images and text in a book (Gibbons, 2012, p. 40). Remley (2017) makes a similar point when discussing the neuroscience of multimodal persuasive messages, when he asserts that “[t]he term ‘multisensory integration’ is the biological equivalent of the term ‘multimodal’ in rhetoric” (p. 9). An understanding of multisensory processing can therefore be (and presumably is) exploited at the stage of text-production as a resource for manipulative multimodal discourses, with all the ideological consequences that entails. The concept of manipulation has been a matter of discussion in critical discourse studies (CDS) and pragmatics for more than a decade. Agreement on how to define and analyse the latter has yet to be reached, although most scholars seem to agree that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) can provide a useful entry point thanks to its theorisation of variable contexts and individual cognitive environments (de Saussure, 2005; Maillat, 2013; Maillat and Oswald, 2009; Oswald, 2014). Moreover, the concept of epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010) has been used to investigate the cognitive barriers that need to be bypassed in order for manipulation to work (Hart, 2013; Mazzarella, 2015). Finally, Sorlin (2017: 133) recently highlighted the need to focus not only on the cognitive aspects influencing manipulation, but also on “the psychological aspect of manipulation that often consists in exploiting the target's weaknesses”, thus pointing towards the dimension of affect as a further explanatory force. This paper begins with an overview of the concepts of manipulation and epistemic vigilance, before discussing insights from the field of multisensory processing in the neurosciences. Then, drawing on some principles from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) and looking at some data from travel documentary programmes and their viewers, examples are offered of how manipulation is attempted and achieved through this specific multimodal genre in individual case studies. The focus of the analysis will be on bottom-up (i.e. text-driven) processes and the interpretation/reaction of an audience. The research draws on a novel methodological approach (Castaldi, 2021) that integrates Audience Research (e.g., Schrøder et al., 2003) and Social Semiotics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; van Leeuwen, 1999; Machin and Mayr, 2012) in order to analyse media interactions in their individuality. Results suggest that the affective dimension, predominantly attended to through sonic and visual modes, plays a key role for multimodal manipulation to successfully occur

Ecosemiotics of the City. Designing the Post-Anthropocene

The city was thought as the place of culture, a boundary of separation from the wilderness. Recently, ecosemiotics has shown that every kind of space is a habitat for those who survive in it. Thanks to a semiotic reading of the city, especially the urban park, we will try to deconstruct the opposition between nature and culture. Moving beyond this dualism it means to intersect every form of life that make up the city. This essay will attempt to rethink our time in a multi-species project aimed at the post-Anthropocene. Along this path we will try to imagine a posthuman that can survive the catastrophe. In the proposal we will see what can be done to live together with non-humans. For this reason we must think a new space for a peacefully coexistence. The ultimate question is: is it possible project the city by the relation between human and non-human? In the conclusion we will ask: is it possible to live as a holobiont

Assembling via ‘Danmu’

The ‘danmu’ system in the Chinese video-sharing social media platform Bilibili, in allowing comments to sync to any specific playback time, has constructed a community where separated viewers can join in the seemingly simultaneous conversations at the same time they watch videos. The participatory design of such co-presence demonstrates the political and cultural gesture of speaking out and exchanging ideas as the main orientation of the platform. Through danmu comments are the living networks connected both in the videos they are attached to, and in Bilibili as a whole. Despite the instantaneous emotions displayed in individual danmu comments, there are affective connections that shape the temporal quality of participation. The playfulness embedded in the interface design has further directed the gratification of speaking out on the platform

MMORPG avatars: Representations of escapism in Chinese society based on semiotics of culture

The development of Internet technology and globalization have boosted the game industry, and among which Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPGs) provide a space where players could create their own avatar at will, and generate their physical and psychological involvement to participate in the virtual experience of the game context. Through cases with semiotics analysis and cultural phenomenon, the correlation between in-game avatar and escapism in Chinese context would be examined on how do in-game avatars connect with escapism in China. This highly resilient virtual social space provides a malleable field far from reality, for the transition from culture to nature, from reality to illusion, and from self to digital self. By analyzing the correlation and rooted reasons between in-game avatar in MMORPGs and escapism in Chinese social context, this project will contribute to the re-understanding of the symbolic meaning of in-game avatars and realistic meaning in Chinese society