The built environment in Social Media: towards a Biosemiotic Approach

The paper presents a biosemiotic approach to the study of the built environment, its representations and practices in social media. First, it outlines the main developments that make semiotics hold a significant position in the study of urban space and the built environment. It then goes on to overcome the limitations of the binary opposition paradigm: in particular, nature/culture is reconsidered as a category in which the two terms are in a relation of mutual participation rather than being exclusive to each other. Following this, the paper explores three participatory categories that can be useful for the study of the built environment and its social media representations and practices: (a) life/semiosis, (b) natural environment/built environment, (c) text/practice. Finally, it identifies five main topics representing the interplay between the natural and built environment: the interaction of nature and architecture, urban parks, urban agriculture, digital environmentalism and ecotourism.