Kristian Bankov 
The Digital Mind [PDF ebook] 
Semiotic Explorations in Digital Culture

This book reveals the core features of digital culture, examined by means of semiotic models and theories. It positions commercial and market principles in the center of the digital semiosphere, avoiding the need to force the new cultural reality into the established textualist or pragmatist paradigms. The theoretic insights and case studies presented here argue for new semiotic models of inquiry that include working with big data, user experience and nethnography, along with conventional approaches.






The book develops a new concept of identity in the digital age, analyzing the digital flows of recognition and value, which led to the tremendous success of Social Media and the Web 2.0 era. Self-expression, entertainment and consumerism are seen as the major drivers of identity formation in the post-truth era, where the self can no longer be considered independently of a given person’s communication devices, where a substantial part of it is stored and actualized. It will be of interest to semioticians and researchers working on digital culture.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Semiotics of digital culture.- Part 1: Theoretic considerations.- Chapter 1. The digital semiosphere.- Chapter 2. The fall of textuality and the rise of interactivity.- Part 2: Semiotic explorations in experience economy.- Chapter 3. The copyright in the digital experience economy.- Chapter 4. Semiotics of experience and digital special FX.- Chapter 5. The market of football experience for the digital economy.- Chapter 6. Cultural transformations of love and sex in the digital age.- Chapter 7. Semiotics of transaction in digital age.- Chapter 8. Semiotic overview on legal tender and digital money.- Part 3: Collective and individual identities in digital culture.- Chapter 9. Identity in digital age: From nationalisms to the post-truth uses of collective symbols.- Chapter 10. Internet, the semiotic Encyclopedia and the Google effect.- Chapter 11. A semiotic exploration in the Web 2.0 emoti(c)onal discursivity in public debates.- Chapter 12. From textualism to hypertextualism.- Chapter 13. Identity and consumer rituals in Facebook.- Conclusions in Time of COVID-19.

Über den Autor

Kristian Bankov (b. 1970) is a Professor of Semiotics at New Bulgarian University,  visiting Professor at Sichuan University,  editor-in-chief of the journal
Digital Age in Semiotics and Communication, and has served as Director of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies since 2007. In 2014 he was elected as the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS). His interest in semiotics began during the early nineties when he was studying in Bologna, following the courses of Umberto Eco and Ugo Volli. He has taught semiotics courses at New Bulgarian University since 1995. In 2000 he defended his Ph D in Helsinki with Eero Tarasti. In 2006 he became an Associate Professor of Semiotics, and was promoted to Professor in 2011. His major interests are in the semiotics of new media and digital culture, sociosemiotics, identity, consumer culture, and semiotics of money. He has written four books and more than one hundred articles in Bulgarian, English, and Italian.