Visual media is integrated into almost every career field and lifestyle today. It is the leading component in television media, a core component in social media, and is integral to the sciences and history. Visual communication can define concepts in a more understandable way, send messages, and can persuade to action.
Doctors use digital imaging techniques for analysis and procedures. Historians record events with visual images. Information technology and computer science depend on visual representations and visual learning. Meteorology is dependent on computer graphics and simulation models using charts, graphs, videos, and images.
How the Advertising and News Media Use Digital Images
The media culture is saturated in visual communication. These images are created or digitally enhanced to send a message. Each message targets a specific audience to persuade, inform, or move to action. Media specialists determine how specific images and symbols affect viewers and their responses to the pictures when choosing illustrations for articles, magazines, and websites.
Photos are easily doctored, an increasing concern with the rise of citizen journalism. The images may be altered to add clarity, but in the process, the message of the image might change. Such was the statement made by Adnan Hajj, the freelance photographer fired from Reuters for doctoring two photos from Lebanon, as reported in this National Press Photographers Association article.
Continued high standards of media ethics and thorough fact checking and vetting of photographs can help to mitigate these important media issues. Digital forensics is an emerging field working to address the issues of faux photography.
How Visual Communication and Design Affect Images
Color is a basic design principle that affects mood and emotional response. Darker pictures evoke depressing moods. Lighter colors evoke a happier, more positive response. Reds and blacks may be used to suggest violence or bloodshed. Negatives of photos often send a message of uncertainty. It’s notable that most pictures about eco-friendly practices incorporate greens and blues, with a predominance of green, the color associated with living things and prosperity.
Likewise, the focal point of the image will change the interpretation. Photos are cropped to define the focus and to send the desired message. The angle of the photo and the lighting will also change how an image depicts a scene. A media collage of digital images can send an entirely new message.
Literacy Questions to Evaluate an Image
Digital visual media can be analyzed in much the same way that textual media is analyzed. A series of questions will help the informed consumer decide if an image is being used to create an emotional response, or send a cultural or social message, or some other type of message.
Good questions to ask when analyzing digital visual media are:
- Who created the image? What is the source?
- What techniques may have been used to alter or enhance the image?
- How does the color, lighting, and angle affect the impact of the image?
- What is in the foreground or appears largest in the picture? How does this influence the interpretation?
- What is included in the picture, and what might be missing?
- Does the image create an emotional reaction or display content?
- Does the image appear truthful?
Understanding Visual Literacy
Digital visual literacy is only one part of media literacy. Visual imagery is everywhere, and will continue to grow as a medium for communication. Many colleges and universities as well as elementary and high schools are now teaching visual literacy as part of an overall media literacy program.
Knowing how the news and advertising media use images, and how images are used in other professions is a start on the road to digital visual literacy. Asking critical thinking questions when evaluating photographs and video will heighten awareness. Understanding of basic design principles, and learning how images and video are altered will round out an overview of digital visual literacy.
For examples of how cropping can alter the message and intent of a photograph, see Digital Literacy 2.0 and Media Collage.
Suzanne Pitner - Suzanne Pitner is a teacher and published writer. A member of RWA and YARWA, she writes fiction as Suzanne Lilly.
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