Vol. 1 (2018): Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication

Volume I (Spring 2018) is the pilot issue of Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication, edited by Kristian Bankov. The journal was first planned as a biannual publication, hence the spring numbering, but it later became annual, with each volume devoted to a single theme. This first issue has no specific topic: it presents a broad programme for the semiotic study of digital culture, with interactivity proposed as its central principle. Its eleven articles are organised in four parts. The first addresses knowledge and identity, examining how personalisation algorithms force out serendipity, how a mock-nationalistic YouTube web series revisits the “imagined community”, and the shift from “me” to “we” on social media. The second explores aesthetic and interactive practices: the digital reconstruction of Istanbul as memory in the film A Touch of Spice, “apeiron” narratives in today’s mediascape, corporate discourse on Instagram, formalism and digital literary research, and the Indian sari between online and offline space. The third turns to corporate communication, with a typology of Facebook brand-page users and a study of digital communication in the regulated tobacco industry. A philosophical reflection on the effects of social media closes the issue.