The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication

This book offers a broad-ranging, innovative framework for understanding the key role of the mass media in the social production of meaning. Klaus Bruhn Jensen draws on classic positions on the relations between communications and society, and on recent work in both social sciences and humanities.

In particular, he brings together the traditions of semiotic research on media content, image and discourse, with current communication research on the audience as an active participant in the interpretation of mediated meanings.

Building on the range of traditions in media and cultural studies, he outlines the basis for an integrative, social-semiotic theory of mass communication. Underlying the author's argument is a reappraisal of the elements of mass communication theory and their relation to the broader concerns of social theory and epistemology in communication research.

Specifically, he argues for a renewal of the pragmatism and semiotics originating from the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce as a comprehensive approach to relating signs, self and society.

The potential of such an approach is illustrated in examples of how a pragmatist semiotics can be applied in actual media research. This challenging book will be essential reading for scholars and students of mass communication research and for all those interested in semiotics, cultural studies, and the social theory of the mass media.