Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719062055 ISBN 13: 9780719062056

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2002

Media semiotics is a lucid investigation of the critical approach in contemporary media studies. Using examples such as Big Brother and Billy Elliot, Jonathan Bignell steps easily from basic concepts to more complex theories, while devoting chapters to specific media forms. New material in this second edition includes sections on men's style magazines, docusoaps and 'reality TV', digital interactive television, and mobile phone text messaging.

This study begins by explaining the concept of the sign and the ideological roles of media in contemporary culture. The book then scrutinises advertisements, glossy magazines, daily newspapers, TV programmes, recent films and interactive media, with each chapter containing close analyses of particular examples. Key strands in critical theory which are allied to semiotics, such as ideology and psychoanalytic theory are explored. Media semiotics moves on to discuss the challenges to establish semiotic methods posed by audience studies and postmodernism, and considers 'new media', including computer games, the Internet and the World Wide Web.

About the Author:

Jonathan Bignell is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London

Review:

"Jonathan Bignell's comprehensive, intelligent and readable introduction to semiotics is ahead of the field in clarity, in its astute use of contemporary examples, and in its openness to both the latest theoretical developments and the criticisms of semiotic theory launched over the last decade by media sociologists." --Sean Cubitt, Liverpool John Moores University