Analysing Persuasion- Seeking Strategies in Pakistani TV Channel Logos: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis – Based study

Abstract

Logos play an important role in the contemporary media that is highly commercialized. They serve as condensed multimodal texts to develop institutional identity and dissemination of certain explicit and implicit ideologies as desired by controlling ideological group.  In this regard, the news channel logos are taken as the strategic semiotic tools of forming authority, recognition and competitive positioning. The data for the study has been collected from official logos of five major Pakistani news channels, the Geo News, ARY News, Dunya News, Samaa TV and Express News. The study employs a qualitative research approach which has been devised by drawing upon Ledin and Machin’s (2020) Multimodal research model. It considers every logo as a communicative unit that does not depend on the audience response. The analysis of the data has been done at linguistic and semiotic levels. These levels include semiotic levels, color (hue, saturation, value), spatial composition (framing, symmetry, containment, layout) and typography (font weight, form, alignment). The findings of the study reveal that the use of visual imagery such as   different colors   are one of the important semiotic resources in the process of   meaning-making. This technique embodies   urgency, trust and prestige.  Whereas, typography strengthens authority, accessibility and tonal positioning. Spatial structuring highlights   institutional positioning in terms of balance, enclosure and visual hierarchy. The research contributes to the literature on the Pakistani media by showing that Multimodal discourse analysis (MMDA) can reveal the visually coded   identities. It has a role in a wider media literacy by underlining the socio-institutional implications of design choices in modern communication practices.  Moreover, the it finds that TV channels logos are tactfully designed and are ideologically loaded. They are instrumental in positioning a certain ideological group as different other.