A semiotic-discursive insight into short videos on memory and peace

Abstract This paper explores how short web videos uploaded to the Truth Commission’s TikTok official profile are formulated. The Truth Commission (Comisión de la Verdad) is a Colombian state entity created to clarify patterns and causes of Colombia’s internal armed conflict and recognize victims’ and society’s right to the truth. The Commission’s aim is to avoid repetition of violence through an ample and plural participation process to construct a stable and lasting peace. To explore the debate and the importance of recognizing crimes against humanity committed in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia – specifically, sexual violations against ethnically and territorially defined women – two videos were selected under thematic, territorial, ethnic, and gender-unity criteria from among 60 short videos published on TikTok between February 2020 and March 2021. The nuclear axis of the videos corresponds to the semiotic theory at the core of the multimodal and multimedia critical discourse analysis (MMCDA). The digital discourse is multimodal, as its design, production, and distribution process draws from various and coexisting sign systems: visual-graphic (image-color), visual-verbal-graphic, verbal-sound, and sound-musical. These devices are proposed as “memory devices” that allow viewers to witness human rights violation events in the context of Colombia’s current armed conflict.