Semiobots, platfospheres, and sign experiments: New challenges in understanding digital communication

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Since the 1980s, when computers became a principal actor in the process of creating digital content, a great variety of professional and cultural practices have tightened the ties between human agents and electronic devices. Nowadays, the pandemic times have contributed to the acceleration of practices concerning personal life, religion, and interpersonal interactions mediated through online technologies. This digital Lifeworld has rapidly developed its own codes, spaces, and collectivities, finding their essence at the boundaries between physical and electronic environments. Platforms and bots are two particularly intriguing cases for semiotics researchers. On the one hand, services, and websites such as the social networks or the blockchain can be considered as platforms in which other services and practices are based. On the other hand, the amount of data that is produced on an everyday basis in those systems cannot be processed by human users alone. We make use of bots (software robots) that assist us in filtering, managing, and producing content. In other words, bots act like organs necessary to living in the digital semiospheres. Given this context in mind, this panel invites contributions that critically interrogate the language, meaning, texts, and discourse of platforms and bots. We welcome theoretical perspectives within the epistemological framework of semiotics, but also semiotic insights from teaching practices, experimental methods, design principles, case analyses, and reverse engineering experiences.