The Role of Affective Experience in Mediating the Influence of Digital Semiotic Elements on Brand Engangement in Social Media

The rapid growth of social media has transformed how brands connect with consumers, emphasizing visual and narrative strategies that evoke emotional resonance. This study explores how digital semiotic elements, namely visual appeal, sensory excitement, brand narrative, narrative symbol, and symbolic iconography, influence brand engagement, with affective experience serving as a mediating factor. A quantitative approach was applied through an online survey of social media users who follow brand accounts in Indonesia. The collected data were analyzed using Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) to assess the reliability and relationships among constructs. The results show that visual appeal, brand narrative, and semiotic elements significantly enhance affective experience, while sensory excitement exhibits a positive yet insignificant effect. Moreover, affective experience strongly predicts brand engagement and partially mediates the influence of semiotic elements on engagement. These findings highlight that visual aesthetics and meaningful symbols play a crucial role in nurturing consumers’ emotional connections and long-term engagement with brands in digital environments.