Identity Today and the Critical Task of Semioethics

Petrilli, Susan

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9404-6_40

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Contrary to the idea that users are unable to truly understand the impact algorithms have on their own lives, semiotics considers that users always have a central role within an algorithmic recommendation system and that they are part of an ongoing dialectic between signs and human interpretation. Therefore, a theoretical approach driven by a "semio-ethic" perspective (Petrilli, 2016(Petrilli, , 2017 might facilitate better analysis and design of algorithmic recommendation systems. While semiotics has demonstrated that everything that is human entails interpretation, semio-ethics extends this semiotic knowledge to ethical analysis.…”

Section: A Semio-ethic Approach To Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, semio-ethics is neither a distinct subfield of semiotics nor ethics. Rather, it appraises the capacity of individuals to engage in listening, critical thinking, deliberation, and taking responsibility for their actions (Petrilli, 2017). This perspective also emphasizes the responsibility involved in designing and using algorithms, and the importance of considering the ethical implications of their semiotic and symbolic dimensions.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Making Sense of Responsibility: A Semio-Ethic Perspective on TikTok’s Algorithmic Pluralism

Scalvini

2023

Social Media + Society

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Utilizing the data collected from 40 in-depth interviews, this study explores: How do users perceive social media platforms’ responsibility in designing algorithms? What do users perceive as diverse or similar in the content generated by algorithmic recommendation systems? The analysis discusses and evaluates the tension between (a) how the platform’s algorithm feeds users similar videos that they highly appreciate and, inversely, (b) how the recommendation of similar videos might limit the diversity of content to which the user is exposed. The analysis adopts a semio-ethic framework to understand why algorithmic platforms like TikTok are perceived to be so efficient in promoting an apparent perception of inclusivity while deliberately erasing alterity and promoting universal sameness. Although videos recommended by TikTok might appear to satisfy computational criteria of diversity, the outcome masks the absence of algorithmic pluralism. The algorithm generates socially desirable videos to allow users to feel comfortable in their in-group. In other words, recommended videos perpetuate a digital form of conformism in a conscious attempt to create the illusion of a more plural community. Advancing the study of algorithmic pluralism is therefore crucial to evaluate the extent to which plurality is understood by users, and what assumptions and ethics underpin the cultures that foster algorithmic recommendation design.

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Section: A Semio-ethic Approach To Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Sense of Responsibility: A Semio-Ethic Perspective on TikTok’s Algorithmic Pluralism

Scalvini

2023

Social Media + Society

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“…To develop semiotic enquiry, the study is rooted in global semiotics, which is broadly defined as the study of signs (Petrilli, 2017). Signs are defined as the images, words, sounds, or any phenomena communicating meaning (Hurley, 2023).…”

Section: Global Semiotics Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It builds on the semiotic concept of abduction, moving from logical inference and observation to a theory (Peirce, 1955). In abduction, in contrast to induction and deduction, the relationship between observable signs and their range of potentially varying interpretations is acknowledged (Petrilli, 2017). In other words, while any sign (e.g., image, meme, video, content, etc.)…”

Section: Global Semiotics Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

#Dubailiving and Digital Placemaking on TikTok: Migrant, Domestic, and Service Workers’ Affective Social Mediascapes

Hurley

2023

Social Media + Society

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While Dubai, the small emirate in the United Arab Emirates, tends to be associated with luxurious social media images of elite social actors, startling architecture, and consumer status symbols, this study addresses migrant, domestic, and service workers’ everyday digital placemaking. To explore these issues, a global semiotic framework reorientates traditional notions of the geopolitical context in terms of Dubai’s social mediascape. TikTok is taken as a case to explore a corpus of Dubai-related hashtags and content being shared by migrant, domestic, and service workers. The central argument of the article is that, while Dubai’s social media cultures reflect hegemonies of Gulf governance and TikTok’s algorithms, they are also infused by workers’ affective digital-placemaking as a form of neoliberal resilience to communicative capitalism and deterritorialization in the social media age. Overall, the article provides much-needed insights into how social mediashapes and is shaped by transnational social actors’ digital placemaking in the Middle East region.

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“…The expression "semioethics" has been introduced by the present author, in collaboration with Augusto Ponzio, to signal a special orientation in the study of signs and life that keeps account of developments in biosemiotics and has a special focus on the relation between signs, values and responsibility [45]. The general science of signs, or semiotics, today "global semiotics" [31,47,68], must be founded in cognitive semiotics, but must also open to a third dimension beyond the quantitative and the theoretical, which is the ethical, what we have designated as the "semioethical" dimension. "Semioethics" is related to the proposal for a new form of humanism, the "humanism of otherness," precisely.…”

Section: Semiosis Language and The Gift Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Language, Communication and the Gift Economy: A Semioethic Approach

Petrilli

2022

Int J Semiot Law

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Maternal gift-giving sustains life and creates positive human relations. Addressing important issues in the theory of language and communication, Genevieve Vaughan associates language and mothering to the free gift economy. A fundamental hypothesis is that maternal gift-giving, mothering/being-mothered forms a non-essentialist, but fundamental core process of material and verbal communication that has been neglected by the Western view of the world. The mothering/being-mothered paradigm is thematized in the framework of gift logic, which is otherness logic. Restoring such a paradigm offers a new light on language, communication and human relations, contributing to recovery of the “properly human” in terms of gift economy values, ultimately to the end of affecting social praxis for radical social change and creating better worlds. The second part of this text is titled “For the Sake of the Other” and presents an exchange of ideas with Vaughan in the form of a written conversation. This text is structured around the following titles: 1. Otherness and Gifting as the Basis of Communication: 1.1. Semiosis, Language, and the Gift Economy; 1.2. The Gift of Speaking and the “Mother Work Schema”; 1.3. Material gifting, Verbal Nurturing, Imagination; 1.4. New Perspectives for Studies in Language and Communication; 2. For the Sake of the Other, with Genevieve Vaughan.

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Identity Today and the Critical Task of Semioethics

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Making Sense of Responsibility: A Semio-Ethic Perspective on TikTok’s Algorithmic Pluralism

Making Sense of Responsibility: A Semio-Ethic Perspective on TikTok’s Algorithmic Pluralism

#Dubailiving and Digital Placemaking on TikTok: Migrant, Domestic, and Service Workers’ Affective Social Mediascapes

Language, Communication and the Gift Economy: A Semioethic Approach

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