SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL POSTERS ON CIGARETTE ADDICTION

Cigarette, which has 1.1 billion users globally, constitutes an important social health problem in Turkey and in the world and continues to find new addicts day by day. Worldwide, one person dies from smoking-related diseases every 4.5 seconds. In addition, more than 600,000 non-smokers die each year due to passive smoking. Many levels of government and non-governmental organizations carry out various studies and seek new methods to find a solution to this global problem. One of these methods is public service announcements and posters with social content, which are an important mass media tool. Social posters, which transform various persuasion methods into visual codes, are effective in raising awareness in societies with their striking and informative features in the context of health communication. Since posters with social content convey many implicit meanings with the literary and visual indicators they contain, the semiotic method is of great importance in the analysis of these meanings. In this research, samples of anti-smoking posters with social content, in which visual codes are intense, were examined and the connotations of the indicators in these posters were revealed. As a result of the examinations, it has been observed that fear-based persuasion methods are generally used in preventing smoking addiction and creating behavior change. As a result, it has been seen that the examined posters have many deep meanings that are overlooked at first glance. Keywords: Smoking addiction, social posters, social responsibility, semiotic analysis