Semiotics In Wartime Communication: Local Cultural Landscapes and Global Meaning-Making

Wartime communication is an intricate process of constructing, interpreting and countering meanings through signs, symbols, narratives and cultural representations. This session would explore the semiotics of wartime communication by analyzing how local cultural landscapes shape the construction, interpretation of meaning and how it counters the adversary’s communication, how these meanings disseminate the message across global communication networks.

In today’s warfare, signs, symbols and narratives like flags, monuments, religious imagery, historical memories, slogans, visual icons and digital content have become a dominant communicative resource apart. These signs tap into locally embedded cultural codes, collective memories and social identities to mobilize support, maintain morale, legitimize action and define friends and foes. Simultaneously, media ecosystem facilitates the transmission of theses culturally specific symbols across national boundaries.

The session invites scholars to investigate how local cultural meanings are translated, transformed, or contested in global wartime narratives. It seeks to understand the role social media platforms, visual propaganda, memes, popular culture, and strategic communication campaigns in shaping perceptions of conflict. Particular attention will be given to the interplay between indigenous symbolic systems and transnational communication processes.

Contributors are encouraged to engage with interdisciplinary perspectives from communication studies, semiotics, cultural studies, media studies, political communication, anthropology, history, and international relations. Possible themes include symbolic representations of nationhood and identity during conflict; semiotics of propaganda and counter-propaganda; visual cultures of war; digital symbolism and meme warfare; religious and cultural symbols in military communication; memory, trauma, and commemorative practices; and the global circulation of wartime narratives.