A new framework for analysing complex social media communication has been published in the leading journal Visual Communication. The article is based on a master's thesis by students from Master in Communication.
Social media posts often combine images, text and audiovisual elements, making them difficult to analyse in a systematic and reliable way.
A new article presents a framework that combines qualitative semiotic coding with large-scale quantitative analysis to study digital communication strategies. The publication builds on the joint master's thesis of Emily Fielder and Luise Wenk from the Master in Communication (MiC) programme at the University of Gothenburg. The students carried out the large-scale data collection and analysis, while Associate Professor Chiao-I Tseng, who supervised their thesis, expanded their work by integrating it with multimodal semiotic theory to develop a new analytical framework.
"The article presents a new approach to multimodal semiotic content analysis that integrates qualitative semiotic coding with quantitative large-scale data analysis to uncover digital communication strategies," says Tseng.
The framework addresses a growing challenge in communication research: how to systematically analyse complex social media content that combines images, text and audiovisual elements while producing reliable, statistically grounded results.
As research on multimodal social media communication continues to expand, researchers need methods that can handle increasingly complex datasets. According to Tseng, many existing studies either lack systematic procedures to ensure reliability and validity or rely primarily on descriptive statistics rather than more rigorous statistical testing.
"This article addresses these gaps by offering a methodologically robust yet accessible framework that combines the strengths of qualitative interpretation with quantitative methods. Such integrative approaches are still relatively rare but increasingly necessary."
The framework is intended for researchers studying digital communication, but it also provides practical methodological guidance for students conducting large-scale studies of social media and digital communication strategies.
For Tseng, the publication also reflects the strengths of the Master in Communication programme.
"The programme encourages students to explore mixed methods and new analytical approaches. These competencies motivate them to conduct empirical studies of publishable quality," she says.
Text: Agnes Ekstrand