This article examines how visual semiotics remains a vital analytical framework for interpreting media imagery, even in the age of generative AI and computational photography. Through a case study of images and texts published by Italian online media during the COVID-19 outbreak, the study explores how visual communication employed symbolic systems, archetypes, and culturally embedded codes to frame the pandemic. Drawing on the work of Barthes, Hall, Rose, and Berger, the methodology combines semiotic analysis with iconological interpretation to decode both denotative and connotative meanings. The findings show that, despite technological advancements in image production and distribution, the visual rhetoric of the pandemic relied heavily on long-standing archetypal narratives—war metaphors, heroic figures, and moral dichotomies—which shaped public perception and emotional response. Examples range from press photographs of deserted urban spaces and militarized public sites to religious imagery and meme culture, including Paolo Miranda’s frontline photography. The analysis demonstrates that such archetypal and symbolic strategies retain their persuasive power in digital culture. In an era defined by algorithmic curation and the proliferation of synthetic media, visual literacy emerges as an essential civic skill—necessary to critically navigate, question, and interpret the images that define contemporary collective experience.
Francesco Arese Visconti (Mon,) studied this question.