Do Pictures Tell a Different Story? A multimodal frame analysis of the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict

Pictures play an ever-increasing role in the public’s understanding of mediated events. However, many studies show that visuals remain an understudied field, especially when it comes to multimodal approaches. This remains an important issue in today’s media environment, where visuals and their interaction with textual contents are becoming increasingly important carriers of meaning. The following paper presents results from a multimodal quantitative content analysis of the online coverage of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, wherein an innovative comparative approach to visual and textual frames was applied. We examine the existing frames, identify patterns of visual and textual frame co-occurrence and describe changes of the applied multimodal framing. Overall, a sample of 150 texts and 219 pictures was coded. The study shows that the applied visual and textual frames initially correspond with each other thematically. During the course of the conflict, however, the provided textual and visual framing divert increasingly. While the textual mode more or less upholds its original framing of the events, the visual level intensifies the framing strategy it has adopted since the escalation of the conflict began. As a result, textual coverage focuses more on negotiations and solutions, whereas images become increasingly graphic.     

Gatecheckers at the Visual News Stream

Over the past 65 years, scholars have reframed the original model of gatekeeping to reflect the changing dynamics of news creation, distribution, and curation. In recent years, communication technologies have opened digital news gates to a proliferation of images captured by professionals and amateurs alike. Anyone with a camera or cell phone can shoot and distribute photographs and videos on the internet. Social media facilitates audience-to-audience sharing through tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat. This stream of visuals, along with the ease with which citizen journalists, bloggers, and tweeters can create and publish content, has changed the gatekeeping process. Few scholars, however, have addressed the impact that visuals have on the gatekeeping model, which was developed using text and broadcast stories. To address the changing role of the visual journalist and the audience, the authors conducted two studies. First, qualitative elite interviews with key visual decision-makers in Europe and the US provided questions for further exploration in the second study—an online cross-sectional survey of visual journalists who belong to three leading US organizations. The questions in this quantitative survey were also influenced by Shoemaker and Reese's hierarchy of influences and Bennett's multigated model. Findings indicate changes in the way visual journalists conceptualize their role and that of the audience. Based on these changes, this article proposes a new model of visual gatekeeping—the twenty-first-century visual news stream where “gatecheckers” select, verify, and curate visuals but no longer solely control their distribution the way traditional gatekeepers did.     

Visual Attention to and Understanding of Graphic Program Advisories: An Eye-Tracking Study

Despite the use of television program advisories for more than 15 years, viewer understanding of these advisories remains problematic. This article summarizes 2 studies demonstrating the effectiveness of alternate graphic advisories in attracting viewer attention and more effectively communicating their intended meaning. Results indicated that younger viewers were more likely to correctly interpret the meaning of graphic advisories relative to the current text advisories. Eye-tracking data revealed that viewers also allocated greater attention to graphic advisories. Although participants interpreted graphic advisories as more restrictive than text advisories, viewers failed to demonstrate so-called “forbidden fruit” effects.     

INSIGHT Telling and Showing: The Intersection of Visual Communication Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Strategies in STEM

Decades of research in (oral) communication across the curriculum can provide a firm foundation for many forms of communication, but the related research focused on discipline-specific visual modalities is sparse. For this pilot investigation, we interviewed 12 faculty members across STEM fields about how students are asked to use visual communication within a course and what kind of visual communication instruction or guidance they are given. The results provide an empirically supported investigation into the perception of the value of visuals in STEM, how students in STEM disciplines learn how to create and use visuals, and how this instruction is accomplished through communities of practice. Based on these results, we argue that it is not enough to teach students discipline-specific writing and oral skills with a quick nod to visuals, but instead there should be special attention devoted to unique pedagogical strategies in teaching visual communication construction.     

Visual Assertions: Effects of Photo Manipulation and Dual Processing for Food Advertisements

In our media landscape, consumers view a plethora of messages with visual assertions, created through postproduction photo manipulation, which communicate meaning at-a-glance. These visual assertions are processed initially and directly and greatly influence how consumers think, feel, and behave. Yet the impact of visuals, which likely color all processing, is not incorporated in persuasive message processing models. Using dual processing models from multiple disciplines as a theoretical foundation, this study demonstrates through two experiments that the effects of photo manipulation, as visual assertions, in food advertising increased consumers' perceptions of healthfulness, positive attitudes, and purchase intentions. Dual processing models for persuasive messages should be extended to account for the initial, influential visual processing of implied assertions, often manipulated during postproduction.     

Radio’s Forgotten Visuals

Some of the most ambitious experiments in early radio programming involved the coordination of sounds and visuals. This essay explores the phenomenon of “illustrated radio,” or radio broadcasts enhanced with accompanying visual media such as lantern slides, museum exhibits, and filmstrips. Newspapers, museums, and schools experimented with this format in the 1920s–40s in an effort to expand their audiences and adapt their informational missions to a changing media environment. While relatively short-lived, illustrated radio constituted a significant form of audiovisual broadcasting before television and highlights the range of uses that were envisioned for radio when it was new.     

The local TV station as an organizational self: Promoting corporate image via Instagram

Television stations are increasingly using social media platforms for a variety of reasons. This study examined more than 4,300 visuals posted to the Instagram sites of 383 local TV stations in the United States. The analysis found that news and promotion were the top themes of the posts. Using Goffman’s (1959) presentation of self as a theoretical foundation, this study found that visuals coded as frontstage received more likes and comments than backstage visuals. Small market stations featured more promotion visuals than large and medium markets. Large market stations featured more lifestyle, community, and news posts than the other market sizes.     

Today's news — tomorrow's context: A dynamic model of news processing

We are proposing a feedback model of news processing, assuming that news reception is guided by media input as well as by existing cognitive structures. However, these structures are in turn shaped by former media coverage. In our study we examine viewers’ processing of TV news, comparing objective news content (content analysis) to subjective meaning of news stories (viewer interviews). Results show that viewers interpret information about new events in the context of past events, themselves mainly a reflection of former media coverage.     

Encouraging Better Graphic Design in Libraries: a Creative Commons Crowdsourcing Approach

A dearth of published literature about graphic design in libraries reveals that little attention has been focused on librarians' visual communication abilities and the impact of print and Web publications on users' interaction with library services and collections. This case study examines one approach to improving the quality of graphic design in libraries. Through a combination of social media and accessible cloud-based storage, Librarian Design Share, a crowdsourced archive of library-related visual materials, highlights exemplars of visual communication in libraries and makes designs freely available for adaptation under a creative commons license.     

Really Social Disaster: An Examination of Photo Sharing on Twitter During the #SCFlood

In the open marketplace of visuals where the most valued photographs “rise to the top” via tweets, likes, and retweets rather than being dictated by professionals, the study of what makes an image go really social is merited. One occurrence during which professional photojournalism and nonprofessional photography truly coexist, intermingle, and blur is that of a natural disaster. A body of research exists that has examined the visual framing of disasters, but none has addressed how these differently framed photos go social online or by whom. In this study, 1,078 Twitter photos shared by professional media outlets and nonprofessional tweeters were examined to see what portrayals of photos are elevated in the network. Established frames and new frames were examined: depictions of people, emotional hierarchy, novelty, victims, ordinary people, uniforms, emergency professionals, valence, pragmatic, human interest, and political. The results add empirical evidence to the different ways that professional members of media and other visual sharers understand, visually communicate, and react to disaster and add to the visual framing literature an element of really social visual framing.     

Effects of threatening visuals and announcer differences on responses to televised alcohol warnings

This study examined threatening background visuals and voice-over differences in televised alcohol warnings. Participants ( N v = v 401) viewed four television adwarning pairs embedded in sports programming. Between-subjects conditions included a threatening visual behind the warning, a non-threatening visual, a plain background, and a no-warning control. Use of a male or female announcer, each using a relatively warm or imperative voice quality, were manipulated within-subject factors. Outcomes included knowledge, cognitive responses regarding warning content and presentation, and perceptions of the risk of the product (beer) shown in the ad. All warnings increased post-test knowledge of alcohol risks relative to control; the largest increase resulted when warnings were accompanied by the threatening visual. Threatening visuals also increased positive thought elaborations about the warning message content and presentation. However, the threatening visuals did not reliably impact perceived risk of beer use, suggesting that threatening visuals influenced responses and knowledge by increasing attention to the warning rather than by increasing perceived threat. These findings are consistent with the EPPM's proposed initial threat appraisal mechanism (Witte, 1992), and further suggest that threatening visuals serve as a heuristic cue motivating increased processing of message content (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), rather than an influence via a peripheral route as suggested by the ELM (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Interactions between drinking level and announcer gender and vocal quality variables were also found, but contributed only trivially to explained variance.     

论"外审"的角色定位

对同行专家以"编外审稿人"的角色定位,给编辑审稿工作带来种种弊端.同行专家在学术信息大众传播中的角色应是作者稿件的同行读者,他们的评议是对媒介和作者有重要参考价值的信息反馈."外审"形式本质上是编辑为及时获得反馈信息而在稿件刊发前对同行专家进行的信息"双向传播".这种方式在大众传播模式发展上具有重要意义.这种角色定位观念对消除审稿工作中的弊端和充分发挥编辑的主体功能有积极作用.     

Analyzing the Spell of War: A War/Peace Framing Analysis of the 2009 Visual Coverage of the Sri Lankan Civil War in Western Newswires

The goal of this study was to analyze the extent to which the visual coverage of the final stages (April/May 2009) of the long-lasting Sri Lankan Civil War relied on war and peace frames. Based on the revolutionary conceptual work of Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, who viewed war and peace journalism as two competing frames in covering conflicts and wars, we examined news photographs available from Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Getty/Agence France-Press (AFP). To date, this topic has been discussed from mostly normative viewpoints, and only little research combined the peace journalism concept with visual framing and/or the role of newswires as gatekeeper of information. We tested this concept empirically by using content analysis of editorial news photographs of the conflict in the three leading Western newswires. By and large, our results suggest that overall visual coverage of the conflict waxed and waned over time, but was primarily driven by visuals originated in the Sinhalese-dominated regions of Sri Lanka. Further, newswires are serving very different purposes and news markets: the AP–and to a lesser extent also Getty/AFP–with their focus on external events (therefore qualifying for peace journalism) and Reuters with a stronger focus on the conflict itself (thus qualifying for war journalism). Overall, the stock photo agency Getty/AFP was found to be the newswire that is most likely to provide media outlets with photographs highlighting peace frames, with the most balanced coverage between the two conflict parties and a particular emphasis on peace demonstrations worldwide, negotiations and summit meetings.     

Images of Injury: Graphic News Visuals’ Effects on Attitudes toward the Use of Unmanned Drones

In this study, sanitized coverage of the United States’ use of military drone strikes in foreign countries is pitted against more graphic news images in an experimental setting to determine effects on attitudes toward the use of U.S. military drones. In addition, multiple news exposures are tested to determine whether individuals can become emotionally inured to such coverage, even when images are more graphic. Key results find those who viewed graphic news visuals did not show evidence of desensitization after repeated viewing and expressed higher levels of concern regarding drone use but not reduced support for U.S. drone policy.     

The structure and content of music continuity

This survey investigated how viewers use and value print promotional ads and on‐air spots. The majority turned to the print media for information about television programs.     

Trivializing the News? Affective Context Effects of Commercials on the Perception of Television News

This study examined whether affect induced by television commercials influences the perception of news programming. An experiment showed that viewers in positive moods generated by television commercials perceive news stories viewed both after and before watching the commercials as more entertaining, relaxing, realistic, and more credible than viewers exposed to neutral commercials do. Of interest, viewers in positive mood, as compared to neutral mood, perceived the topic presented in the news story as less important and serious.     

Visual Agenda-Setting,Emotion, and the BP Oil Disaster

This study seeks to identify the most memorable visual imagery of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill by comparing a content analysis of television images and a survey of the most-remembered images. The study compared visuals from weeks 1 and 6 of the disaster to a survey conducted a year later that asked respondents to freely recall the most memorable images of the disaster. The comparison showed respondents did indeed choose as the most memorable images the visuals coded with greatest frequency in the content analysis. However, the emotions evoked by the oil-soaked animals elevated that set of images to the most memorable—chosen by almost half of respondents. This set of images was number one with the respondents yet number eight in frequency in the content analysis. This study shows a visual agenda-setting effect heightened by emotion.     

All About Whom? Stock Photos,Interactive Narratives and How News About Governmental Surveillance Is Visualized

A two-stage analysis examined visuals in news related to governmental surveillance, finding that just as surveillance has shifted from visual evidence to dataveillance, journalism is shifting its notion of visual evidence from photojournalism to journalistic data representations. First, a card sort analysis of news visuals was conducted on two news sites before and after Edward Snowden's document leak in June 2013. The news images remained relatively consistent, relying heavily on accessible official and stock photography sources. Second, a review of The Guardian's contemporaneous “NSA Files: Decoded” multimedia package found personalized, data-rich visual storytelling techniques. Between the two approaches is a vast difference in how surveillance is represented and made accessible, with implications for the visual coverage of other challenging news topics.     

Watchdog,Voyeur, or Censure?

One of the longest-running ethical debates in visual journalism is the extent to which graphic and/or violent photographs should be present in our news media. The current research is designed to elicit further understanding about this complex topic from a framing effects perspective. The research uses a 2 (level of graphicness) × 3 (story topic) experimental design to test for media effects of graphic photos in regard to such variables as attitude toward the situation and attitude toward continued US involvement in the situation. The three story topics are the 2011 Somalia famine, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and the 2003 war in Iraq. In addition, the research integrates eye-tracking data—a unique approach to understanding the effects of graphic photographs on participants. The research did not find across the board significant effects in regard to level of graphicness; however, a key finding emerged: the nature of the news story did lead to significant effects. In addition, the inclusion of eye-tracking data showed that the highly graphic photos more quickly attracted participants' attention and that participants' fixated on highly graphic photos for a longer amount of time.     

Psychological Reactions to Crime News Portrayals of Black Criminals: Understanding the Moderating Roles of Prior News Viewing and Stereotype Endorsement

An experiment examined the extent to which viewers’ death penalty application, perceptions of crime danger, and culpability assessments could be influenced by exposure to a majority of Black suspects in the news or having the race of suspects go unidentified in a newscast. The current study also investigated the extent to which prior news viewing and African American stereotype endorsement might moderate the effects of this racialized crime news exposure. After exposure to a majority of Black suspects or unidentified suspects in a newscast, African American stereotype endorsers were more likely than stereotype rejecters to support the death penalty. Furthermore, heavy television news viewers exposed to a majority of Black suspects were more likely than light news viewers to perceive the world as dangerous and view a race-unidentified suspect as culpable for his offense. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of social cognition theories of priming, cognitive accessibility, stereotype activation and application.