Autores externos al CIM: Gustavo Niklander Ribera

It is advocated augmented indexicality as a trust anchor on the Internet ecosystem, particularly on online reviews. Comments on product and services are discourses compounded of a diversity of significant substances(linguistic text, sounds, images in motion or fixed). They influence opinions, preferences, attitudes and behaviours, and act as social markers in purchase decisions, especially in choices associated with buying on the Internet and in brick–and–mortar stores. They are testimonial statements, whose argumentative strength is based on augmented indexicality referring to a specific time, a self, and, in some cases, a place (given by geolocation, the website interface, the dialect or any other marks in the language). Furthermore, the augmented indexes appear in the texts of the online reviews as deictics or shifters. In this paper, first, the concept of “indexicality” is expanded to include linguistic elements. Second, the concept of truth on the Internet, on social networks, and in the news, conjointly with indexicality marks, and testimonial discourses, are described. Third, online reviews are affirmed to be social markers constituted on indexes. Fourth, the conclusions summarize the aspects previously addressed.

Lexia Journal of Semiotics.