Social semiotics of quarantine checkpoint signages for COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines: Insights for disaster literacy

The Philippine government's narrative of war against the "unseen" enemy uses order and control as a disaster risk reduction response to address the current health emergency.Because quarantine checkpoints have become the physical manifestations of this narrative, it is important to study how they negotiate identities and behaviors to reinforce order and control.This investigation was undertaken through a multimodal analysis of 34 sample images of checkpoint signages placed all over the country during the first months of lockdown.An inventory of elements and an analysis of semiotic resources in the linguistic, typographical, and layout modes of the design were conducted to discover both explicit and implicit meanings and attitudes these signages communicate.The analysis revealed that semiotic decisions in the design purposefully foreground authority and power relations and that the attempts to mitigate this power contribute to the kind of face the government intends to portray-strict but understanding.The insights about the reception of its intended audience were drawn from an online survey where 84 participants ranked the elements according to the sequence when they noticed them.The reasons behind their ranking were also solicited.The survey revealed that the audience of checkpoint signages reacts to color, position, relevance, and other typographical emphasis tools such as underline and boldface.This paper posits that in emergency communication when understanding essential information is a matter of life and death, it is important to know what semiotic resources can be optimized to ensure attention and comprehension.