A collaborative research framework for the study of meaning,
knowledge, and interpretation in artificial intelligence and computational culture.
What Is Digital Semiotics?
Digital semiotics is the study of how meaning is produced, circulated, and interpreted within computational environments. It examines the semiotic conditions under which artificial intelligence systems generate and transmit symbolic forms — text, images, classifications, visualizations — and how those forms function within human systems of knowledge, communication, and evaluation.
The field draws on classical and contemporary semiotics, information science, knowledge organization, and AI studies. Its central concern is not whether machines are intelligent, but how their outputs operate as signs: how they acquire meaning, how that meaning is authorized, and how it shapes the epistemic practices of those who receive and use it.
The Problem
AI-generated content frequently assumes the formal properties of human expression — structure, coherence, authority — while being produced without intention, lived experience, cultural memory, or sustained participation in interpretive communities. This displacement raises fundamental questions for semiotics and information science alike:
- How is knowledge represented when signification is increasingly automated?
- How is interpretive authority assigned to machine-generated outputs?
- What is lost when meaning is detached from human continuity and context?
Digital semiotics addresses these questions as theoretical problems with practical consequences for how knowledge is organized, trusted, and used.
About This Project
This site is a collaborative research hub for scholars working at the intersection of semiotics, information science, knowledge organization, and AI studies. It develops digital semiotics as a shared theoretical framework — one open to contribution, critique, and extension.
Researchers are invited to engage with the framework, contribute to its development, and bring their own disciplinary perspectives to bear on the study of meaning in computational culture.