Semiotic Studies of a Picture of Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan Reading ‘How Democracies Die’ Book

Abstract

A photo of Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan on a Twitter account on Sunday, November 22, 2020, has become viral on social media. The photo was repeatedly reposted, responded to, and made into the news by online news portals. The uploaded photo has received 3.9k comments, 6k reposts, and 32.5k likes (as of 12 December 2020) by other Twitter users, also the headlines that many news posts on various portals with many comments and response icons that netizens write. The impact of a photo of a public figure has to be taken into account. The controversy that arises over the posting of photos is an interesting thing to research. The semiotic study of these photos was carried out using the semiotic method of the present Ferdinand De Saussure. As a linguistic expert, Ferdinand De Saussure's semiotic method was chosen because the photo under study contains text that needs to be analyzed more deeply. An interdisciplinary field is also needed because it can integrate various disciplines in the discussion of the analysis. What was found were 1. Punctuality in downloading photos, 2. The success of making photos in arranging and selecting the items presented in this photo.

Keywords: social media, communication, portrait photography, semiotics