Notes

familiarizeSemiotics is part of textual analysis which uses sign systems in most of media texts, where sign systems are used impose and rebuild meanings in media texts. O’Shaughnessy et al. (2012) states that sign systems link context to audiences within two signs, signifier and signified. However, these signs are made according to what people wants in the society, where information producer convey information based on societal values in order to make audiences to conform the values given by media texts. The signifier and signified must be linked together a make ideas and meanings which make sense to the real life (O’Shaughnessy et al., 2012). For instance, Hicks (2019) wrote the news headline with “Gay people can be whipped or stoned to death in Brunei from today” from Daily Mirror while Gerken (2019) wrote “Brunei hotels withdraws from social amid anti-LGBT law backlash” from BBC news, both of the articles’ headline consist of different meanings are called signified. They give readers a brief description of concept of the articles with headline aligning with their content. However, signs are categorized into 3 types, iconic, indexical and symbolic (O’Shaughnessy et al., 2012). Iconic sign represents image or video in reference to the context of media texts, indexical sign is used to point out the context of the content (on cause and effect), and symbolic signs represents letters, symbol and words for description (O’Shaughnessy et al., 2012). In the online news articles, image or video are used as iconic sign, while words such “can be whipped or stoned” from DailyMirror’s article used as indexical sign. headline from BBC with “Brunei hotels withdraw from social media amid anti-LGBT law blacklash”, where it shows convention which based on consensus of issue.