Semiotics of Television News

Nowadays media have become the fastest source of disseminating information and audiences hang on them for being informed of the world developments. Television, among other forms of media, has various functions, and television news networks with their huge audiences are one of the significant components of power in national and international arena. The performance of television as a sign system is the result of interaction between different sign systems. The present research aims to examine various levels of meaning construction in television news. Thus, news from four different channels, i.e. France 24, IRINN, Channel One and Channel Two, during a four-month period was examined through semiotics and layered semiology and then, signs and codes involved in production of news for television as a sign system were constructed through interaction among various sign systems. This research was carried out at three levels of speech, image and word as codes involved in meaning construction in news. The way lingual and non-lingual signs were applied in news is also discussed in the article.