From semiotics of hypermedia to physics of semiosis: A view from system theory

TL;DR

This paper develops a formal, empirically validated model of hypermedia communication based on semiotics and system theory, offering new insights into the internal mechanisms of complex communication systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formal representation of communication as coupled autonomous systems and provides a mathematical interpretation of semiosis, validated through experiments.

Findings

Formal model of communication as coupled autonomous systems

Mathematical interpretation of semiosis in communication

Empirical validation of semiotic models

Abstract

Given that theoretical analysis and empirical validation is fundamental to any model, whether conceptual or formal, it is surprising that these two tools of scientific discovery are so often ignored in the contemporary studies of communication. In this paper, we pursued the ideas of a) correcting and expanding the modeling approaches of linguistics, which are otherwise inapplicable (more precisely, which should not but are widely applied), to the general case of hypermedia-based communication, and b) developing techniques for empirical validation of semiotic models, which are nowadays routinely used to explore (in fact, to conjecture about) internal mechanisms of complex systems, yet on a purely speculative basis. This study thus offers two experimentally tested substantive contributions: the formal representation of communication as the mutually-orienting behavior of coupled autonomous systems, and the mathematical interpretation of the semiosis of communication, which together offer a concrete and parsimonious understanding of diverse communication phenomena.