Marie Lena Tupot and Tim Stock
Semiotics tends to be a word researchers avoid using when meeting new clients. It has a perception problem of being too academic or theoretical. Ironically, it is at the core of everything a client needs in order to understand people.
We’re simply analysing symbols and signs, and ideally getting people to think beyond their assumptions. These symbols and signs are physically put out into the world by us. When did this exercise of trolling signs and symbols get construed as academic? Even the most over-thought analysis can be a learning exercise.
It’s human nature to signify things. It’s human nature to make sense of the world by seeing patterns. Think about it, how often in friendly conversations have you unexpectedly been quipped at “What do you mean by that?” Gesture may have unintentionally conveyed the wrong idea. Or belied other intent. Everyone does it, even animals put signs out there.
Structure is lucidity
The key to a careful practical outcome when it comes to semiotics is to have a consistent pattern of analysis. With human nature as a volatile variable, the structure is critical. Why? Because our brains will see what they want to see. According to David McRaney, author of “You are Now Less Dumb,” we have to watch out for the phenomenon of confirmation bias: A person thinks their opinions are the result of rational, objective analysis. Instead, our opinions are the result of years of “paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.”
The danger of confirmation bias is that we confirm what we think we already know, rather than getting ahead of where we already are. In order to keep our own biases fully out of the picture, we need to keep constantly refocusing and challenging our senses.
Add to that the flood of data coming at us. There is no place that can be discredited as a source of data. All things build context, but structure keeps the input manageable and thereby see-able. It does us no good if we are so overloaded with information that we can’t manage it. And it does us no good to be looking at lowest common denominators. Sweeping common ground doesn’t help us in the quest to be predictive.
Structure lets us tighten the variables and guide how a subject is being looked at. If not, chaos ensues. With structure, we can better convey our thinking to others. In other words, we can better wring our brains.
Our particular structure is a patent pending methodology of culture mapping that plots cultural codes of meaning on a semiotic matrix relating expression, self and society. We track the migration and dimension of cultural signals on that matrix over time using a combination of ethnography, linguistic analysis and social media analytics.
Making sense of selfies
A grounded way to make certain your structure is correct is to start with the mundane, everyday things in life. Take selfies. They’re ubiquitous. They’re human. And everyone has their own perception about what a selfie is, including whether or not they themselves are selfie-taking people. Last summer, to get a better understanding of why people were posting selfies, we ran a semiotic analysis to set a benchmark for their meaning and evolution.
To summarise the selfie report, we came to the conclusion that there were four archetypes of selfie takers. We looked at how selfie posters were networked. We studied the content of selfies themselves. We scanned the news about selfies. We look at a lot of things to place the subject of selfies in context and we organised our findings onto our matrix.
In the case of selfies, we found that the initial cultural archetype of selfie posters was underscored by the drive to tell a story. Yet, presently that need is being overshadowed by a crave for popularity. In spite of that, selfie culture is beginning to come full circle, back to story again. That sounds pretty elementary, as it should. Understanding culture should not be cryptic. Understanding the unique nuances from one culture to the next, however, can get a bit mind-bending. But understanding those nuances of culture was the reason we began culture mapping in the first place more than 10 years ago.
Diversity is not apparent to everyone
When most people see selfies, they think “selfie” culture, one wholly formed culture. As one respected colleague smartly responded when he heard we were working on selfie report, “No need to look for selfie patterns. It is simply called narcissism.” He was dead wrong. Narcissism is a byproduct of selfie taking for some. But not true for all. And, for others, selfies are like visual plastic surgery. Tilt here, lean forward. Snap, you’re another person!
We ultimately mapped four types of selfies: those that open up conversations, those that manipulate media, those that join conversations, and those that seize the opportunity for promotion — that’s your classically perceived “narcissistic” selfie.
We also extended the selfie exploration beyond the US. We used the same culture mapping matrix to place selfies posted across the globe in context. Even with selfies, country zeitgeist manifests itself uniquely. Certain hashtags are more popular in some countries than others. Russians tend to use #I (in cyrillic), whereas Americans are more likely to use #me. Saudi Arabians are using #yolo at more frequency than Americans. And the French are francophoning #selfie as #leselfie.
We have to dig deeper
Our hope, on a grand scale, would be that people constantly test their assumptions about what they perceive as one culture. Do they see something that is homogenous? Or can it be broken down further. It’s not enough to simply identify a culture and its signs. We have to continually dig deeper for meaning.
We took the selfie exploration one step further. We asked ten New York City middle school girls representing seven different middle schools to oblige us. We asked them to draw a picture of their own typical selfies and then draw a picture of the kind of selfie they would typically make fun of.
Unanimously, the girls drew toned down, but positive, versions of themselves. And they drew outlandish narcissistic poses of what they would make fun of. The conversation moved on to the type of girls they knew posting “those” kind of selfies. They were absolutely aware of the difference. Even more interesting was that many of the photos the girls considered selfies were not selfies by our definition.
Girls behave in unexpected ways
We had defined a selfie as a self portrait shared on social media. Most of the selfies for these girls still lived within the security blanket of their own phones. These selfies were never posted. Nor were they deleted. The ensuing discussion made it quite apparent that the girls were using their hidden selfies to know what they looked like. Essentially, they wanted to know what they might be putting out into the world — before they put it out there in person. For them, selfies were a filter.
What does that say? It says we have a rising culture of adolescents who feel the need to have a system of checks and balances. It means those girls are trusting themselves to provide that judgment. That’s powerful.
Self-possession is very different for young American teens in comparison to the millennials we have come to know. The older millennials have been rather sheltered and overprogrammed, and are learning the hard way to be self-reliant. As the parent generation of millennials moves from boomers to gen x’ers, we can expect some changes in attitude.
Always be testing
Using selfies was an accessible way to test our assumptions. Most people are exposed to selfies today in some form. It’s something that they are likely to have a point of view about. Starting with a platform that is understandable helps people “get it.”
It also demonstrates how semiotics functions as a bridge from ethnography to anthropology. It’s one thing to collect and document by observation. Semiology allows us to make sense of those findings, and come to acceptable generalisations required by anthropology. That does not necessarily mean that a person must agree with another’s findings. An analysis functions as the proverbial gauntlet. A point of challenge: “This is what we think.”
Evolve the dialog
That should start a conversation, and evolve the dialog. We live in a culture fueled by hacking and refashioning — people taking their own spin. If semiotics is about making judgments about the relationship between signs and the world, then it’s living and breathing and begging to be decoded. And argued.
Semiotic analysis and the methodologies we cultivate should stand up to testing, no matter how mundane or complex the subject of research. Consistent structure allows us to confidently make recommendations solving real everyday problems for our clients. Our findings should hold true longitudinally.
If that science is dismissed as theoretical or “academic,” then we have squelched the human nature of exploration and understanding. Once exploration is gone, so is our will to own ourselves. We should want to thoroughly understand the world in which we live.
Tim Stock and Marie Lena Tupot are founders and owners of scenarioDNA. Tim Stock can be reached via Twitter at @timstock
