Visual Communication 2014 Abstracts
Unwitting Investigators: Documentary Filmmakers as Investigative Journalists • Jesse Abdenour, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper makes a case for documentaries as a new form of investigative journalism. If investigative journalism is declining, as some critics charge, documentaries could be “filling the gap.” Based on inductive analysis of qualitative interviews with documentary filmmakers, this study found that although documentarians do not see themselves as investigative journalists, they approach their work in a similar fashion and often use similar storytelling techniques.
Watchdog, voyeur, or censure? An eye-tracking research study of graphic photographs in the news media • Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon • One of the longest-running ethical debates in visual journalism is the extent to which graphic and/or violent photos should be present in our news media. The research uses a 2 (level of graphicness) x 3 (story topic) experimental design to test for media effects of graphic photos. The research also integrates eye-tracking data—a unique approach to understanding the effects of graphic photos on participants.
Picturing Kennedy: Photographic framing in the 50-year commemorative coverage of the assassination of JFK • Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon; Hannah McLain, LSU • As we remembered Kennedy 50 years later, this study sought to understand how commemorative journalism visually framed our collective remembrance, through photographs deemed both iconic and untraditional. Analysis of 905 photos found that iconic photos played a critical role, but they did not represent the entirety of the coverage. The photographic framing covered all aspects of the story, but it emphasized the media’s role in the telling–and subsequent shaping of public understanding–of the assassination.
Sticking it to Obamacare: The visual rhetoric of Affordable Care Act advertising in social media • Janis Teruggi Page, George Washington University; Margaret Duffy, Missouri School of Journalism; Greg Perreault, Missouri School of Journalism • In 2013, video ads attacking and supporting the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) appeared. Through the lens of Symbolic Convergence Theory and Visual Rhetoric, this study found visual narratives using cultural appropriation, incongruity, and dark humor that propelled anti-Obamacare ads to social media sharing. The analysis points to the potential consequences of powerful and well-funded individuals and groups skillfully manipulating social media with visual rhetoric that benefits their causes and beliefs.
Graphic deception: Individuals’ reaction to deceptive information graphics • Nicholas Geidner, University of Tennessee; Jaclyn Cameron, University of Tennessee • This study examines individuals’ understanding and judgment of news information graphics designed in a purposefully deceptive manner. An experimental design was utilized to examine the effects of deceptive design practices on the amount of time the user spent on the graphic, information recall, and perceptions of credibility. Further, we examined these effects in the context of two types of news stories (i.e., general and political news). Using a student sample (N = 239), it was found that recalled more information from the bias graphic and found it less credible than the non-bias graphic. The implications of these findings for both academic researchers and working journalists are discussed.
30-Second Political Strategy: Videostyle of Political Television Spots • Sang Chon Kim, University of Oklahoma; Doyle Yoon, University of Oklahoma; Joonil Kim, University of Oklahoma • By content-analyzing political television spots for the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, the current study examined and compared verbal, nonverbal, and production styles (1) between incumbent and challenger ads and (2) between Democratic and Republican ads. A total of 259 political television spots for the three candidates—Obama, McCain, and Romney—were analyzed. Significant differences were found in videostyles between the 2008 and 2012 Obama ads and between Democratic and Republican ads. These analyses help not only to identify dominant trends in recent political campaigns (i.e., recent political advertising), but also to ascertain how different campaign strategies reflect different political positions (i.e., Obama campaigned as a challenger in 2008 and as an incumbent in 2012). More implications are discussed.
Understanding Digital and Participatory Communication by Social Media and Prosumption Practices via Video Ethnography • Sunny S. K. LAM, The School of Arts & Social Sciences, The Open University of Hong Kong; Jo Yung, Ipsos Hong Kong Limited • The new media system/environment is a result of collective knowledge by the wisdom of crowds and Web 2.0 participatory cultures, and a result of convergence of media, communication and content production/consumption (prosumption) by mediation, remediation and mediatization. User-generated media by prosumption activities provide new sources of online information by consumers/prosumers who are actively educating each other about branding and imaging, products and services, lifestyles and personalities, and social and political issues via interactive conversations. The resulting electronic word-of-mouth and viral propagation of the Internet-based social media reveals a new concept and phenomenon in digital communication and marketing of important implications to both marketers and academic scholars. This article explores social media and digital communication within the prosumption dynamics in the transmedia age, and exemplifies an innovative methodological collision of academic and market research to study prosumption behaviors on social media via video ethnography.
The effects of online news package structure on attitude, attention, and comprehension • Karen McIntyre, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Spencer Barnes, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Laura Ruel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study examined two online news package designs and their effects on users’ attitudes, comprehension, and attention. Results revealed that different aspects of comprehension (recognition and inference) were influenced by the interaction between website design and attention. Users who spent at least 10 minutes browsing were better able to recognize facts after looking at a single-page, scroll-through site, whereas those same users showed a deeper understanding of content after looking at a multiple-page, click-through site.
Photos of the Day Galleries: Representing a More Nuanced World • Jennifer Midberry, Temple University • This content analysis of images from Photos of the Day online galleries from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post investigates whether such galleries present the world outside of the U.S. as negatively as the wining images of the Pulitzer Prize and POYi contests do. The results indicate that Photos of the Day galleries are a rare space in U.S. photojournalism where international news is presented in a nuanced manner.
The Wedding Video as Personal Interaction: Extending Dramaturgy to the Social Media World • Michael O’Donnell, University of St. Thomas • Erving Goffman first proposed using the theater as an analogy to explore human interaction in 1959. Since Goffman’s ideas were published, dramaturgical social analysis has been applied to the study of the work place, prisons, schools, churches and politics. Goffman applied the structure and terminology of the theater to “face-to-face” interactions, each interaction “roughly defined as the reciprocal influence of individuals upon one another’s actions when in one another’s immediate physical presence.” Much has changed since 1959 in the way we interact with one another, most notably in how social media has become an important, if not primary, means if personal interaction for millions of people. This study explores one particular niche of social media, the video sites of YouTube and Vimeo, and one particular type of personal expression, the wedding video. These videos represent a shift in how many of us express one of the most intimate and sacred life events, marriage. Goffman’s idea of theater as an analogy for interaction has been turned on its head. Today’s wedding videos demonstrate how the theater, or more broadly, the world of entertainment, has become a template for behavior, not just a useful analogy. Even beyond that, personal interaction through social media is calculated not just to mimic theater but also to be theater — to entertain. In this regard, the ideal performance, or ceremony, of the traditional wedding has been sublimated to producing a theatrical video that will impress others with the couple’s creativity, talent and “hipness.”
Picturing Health and Community: A Visual Perspective of Photovoice Missouri • Tatsiana Karaliova; Heesook Choi; Mikkel Christensen, University of Missouri; Frank Michael Russell, University of Missouri/Missouri School of Journalism; Ryan Thomas, Missouri School of Journalism • This study examined 434 photographs and captions from 207 participants of the Photovoice Missouri project in urban, suburban, and rural communities. A qualitative textual analysis revealed the potential of photovoice to accumulate social capital as resources that can lead to positive behaviors. The participants expressed concerns about health risks, access to fresh food, and conditions in the communities discouraging physical activities. Considerable differences in concerns and priorities were found between the different types of communities.
Consumer Mood, Thinking Style and Creative Metaphor Techniques in Advertising • Jun Myers; Sela Sar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • An experiment was conducted to examine the effect mood and thinking style on the effectiveness of creative metaphor ads. Results demonstrated that overall positive mood state induced higher ad evaluations of creative messages. In addition, consumers’ chronic thinking style (holistic vs. analytical) also significantly interacted with the use of metaphor techniques in the ad with consumers’ mood state to affect their evaluation of the advertisement. The results showed that three predicted hypotheses received partial support. Specifically, the results for ad evaluation were statistically significant. However, the results for purchase intention did not reach statistically significant. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.
Darkness Visible; Blindness and Borders/Memories and Movies • David Staton, University of Oregon • Memory is so informed by the visual it’s hard to imagine having recollections without the sense of sight. To be sure, other senses are involved in memory making, but vision is privileged in such inordinate fashion that the noted neuroscientist António Damásio (1999) has written “one might argue that images are the currency of our mind…even the feelings that make up the backdrop of each mental instant are images.” In “In Search of Lost Time” (or “Remembrances of Things Past”) Proust wrote of sensory impressions and lived experience as memoire involontaire; certain actions or particular sensations can awaken these recollections. However, a forced recalling of such moments, in his view, result in a different bringing forth, the memoire voluntaire. Benjamin’s subsequent dissection of Proust’s notions offers a framework to examine notions of looking, learning, living. Imagine, then, if this process of seeing and remembering might be radically interrupted. What becomes of memory if that primal sense is removed from embodied experience, extracted from our stories and language? To further problematize this scenario, imagine the Herculean task of attempting to give visual voice to the memories of a sightless narrator. In short, what might internalized memories of a blind person look like externalized for others to share—how is such a narrative performed? Three films of recent vintage—”Notes on Blindness” (2014), “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007), and “Blue” (1993)—take on this challenge. A textual analysis of key scenes from each of the films will investigate how the filmmakers articulated this (re)vision as well as point toward thematic linkings between the projects.
What Are Shaping the Ethical Standard? Examining Factors Influencing Public Acceptance of News Photo Alteration • Q. J. Yao, Lamar University; Zhaoxi Liu, Trinity University; David Perlmutter • Public acceptance is gradually established as the ethical standard of news photo editing. It is therefore critical to study what factors impact public acceptance. This paper identifies the perceived prevalence of photo alteration, media credibility, and Photoshop use and knowledge as the major influencers. The study implies the necessity of intervention from scholars, media professionals, and ethical activists, as mere relying on public acceptance may continuously lower the ethical standard for news photo alternation.
When a picture is combined with a thousand words: Effects of visual and verbal arguments in advertisements on audience persuasion • Shuhua Zhou; Cui Zhang; Yeojin Kim, University of Alabama; Lin Yang • Visual arguments have been largely studied in the rhetorical and interpretive literature. In spite of the power of visuals in advertising, visual argument has never been studied along with verbal arguments in advertising. Thorough an experimental study, this study seeks to provide empirical evidence that visual and verbal arguments can both be potent factors affecting users’ perception of and valence toward the ads and the brands, as well as purchase intention. Results largely supported these hypotheses. Implications for future studies are discussed.
