Mobile Multi-media Messages (MMS): Show-don't-tell in a Communication

With its complex intersemiotic and intermedial textual configuration, the multimedia mobile message (MMS) offers a unique opportunity to apply visual semiotics tools to the theories of communication. By means of an experimental technical device used by a sample of MMS users who exchanged real image-containing messages, the author highlights the ways in which individuals play with the technical constraints of the MMS application during message production. The analysis of a set of simple messages reveals the extent to which the natural indicial tension of photography impregnates the messages, to the point of their assuming a playful dimension, through ingenious playing on meaning within the framework of a private message.