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spacebacon | 1 month ago
The comfort of entrenched epistemological positions is precisely what the paper challenges. Algorithmic curation transforms semiotic underdetermination from productive interpretive flexibility into polarization infrastructure. Signs that previously functioned as fragmentary mosaics requiring contextual negotiation now aggregate into segregated meaning-spaces through automated enregisterment.
The empirical contribution lies in formalizing this transition. Traditional semiotics documented indexicality and enregisterment qualitatively. Computational systems generate quantifiable semiotic dynamics at scale. This enables measurement of phenomena previously accessible only through ethnographic observation.
The bifurcation model operationalizes what Kockelman's framework describes: semiotic agency under algorithmic mediation produces stable dual attractors where signs acquire systematically divergent interpretations based on enclave membership. "Defund the police" demonstrates this mathematically. Single signifier, dual signifieds, no shared interpretive ground. The system has bifurcated semiotically.
Applied semiotics requires acknowledging that meaning-making occurs within measurable dynamical systems, not transcendent hermeneutic spaces. The treachery is not that signs lie. The treachery is that signs now operate according to bifurcation dynamics while we continue analyzing them with pre-algorithmic frameworks.
The paper provides formal tools for empirical semiotics. Whether the field adopts them depends on whether methodological innovation overcomes institutional inertia. The dynamics documented in the paper apply to academic knowledge production as much as political discourse.
The Treachery of Signs Semiotic Mediation, Pitchfork Bifurcation, and Political Polarization in Algorithmically Curated Societies
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