Semiotic machines : software in discourse

• Main Author: Walton, Marion
• Other Authors: Marsden, Gary
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Computer Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6370

Includes abstract. === Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-259). === This study develops new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of software as a medium of communication. This study analyses voting software, educational software, search engines, and combat and narrative in digital games. In each case it investigates how proprietary software affords discourse, and suggests a way of characterising users’ experience of this discourse. These affordances constitute the rules of communication, or ‘rules of speaking’, ‘rules of seeing’, and ‘writing-rights’ which proprietary software makes available to users, situating them within specific power-relations in the process.