Germany Bans the Red Triangle: Nomadic Semiotics in Digital Image Analysis
Often, “pictures provide insights into the practices through which people construct themselves as social beings within specific locales and enable us to link personal life worlds to wider societal contexts” (Hodgetts et al., 2007, p. 267). How does digitality manifest these contexts and how can it be analyzed?
This paper examines some characteristics of nomadic semiotics grounding an analysis of the deep complexities associated with using digital visual images, without ignoring affective and aesthetic levels. Taking a cue from Du Bois’ work over 100 years ago, I will present a practical example by examining the current sociological implications of the use of red equilateral triangles in social media.
Image interpretation is grounded in practices of examining experiences of creating/perceiving without treating sets of relations between symbols and their potential meanings as closed systems. Because images are not subject to the confines of written or formal verbal communication (Schratz & Steiner-Loffler, 2003), they create space for complex ideas to be presented more directly than spoken or written forms of communication. Prosser (2003) notes that “Images are, by their nature, ambiguous and do not in themselves convey meanings which are supplied serendipitaly by those who perceive them” (p. 98). As such, it is useful to operate within a theoretical understanding of images that contemplates them as social interfaces, by “intentionally engaging thinking by and on as well as through the image” while keeping in mind that “shifting terminology and expanding theoretical and methodological repertoires are symptomatic of the image’s refusal to be disciplined” (Cambre 2021, 748).