Keith Kenney

Building Visual Communication Theory by Borrowing from Rhetoric

Abstract This article shows how key conceptsfrom the classical and symbolic perspectives of rhetoric have been applied to visual means of communication, Classical rhetorical canons,figures, and arguments are also explained via an example of how a journalism professor used pictures and video to persuade a city council to limit the proliferation of billboards.Withinthe symbolicperspective, concepts such as identification, epideictic genre, depiction, representative form, and invited audience are explained and used to evaluate visuals. These concepts then are applied to a critique of Perlmutter’s theory of “visual determinism” in relation to “icons of outrage.”

Images of Africa in news magazines: Is there a black perspective?:

More than 20 years of research confirms the media ignore Africa unless there is a major famine or conflict. Why? Part of the answer is race. A comparison of news of Africa in Emerge, a news magazine for the black middle-class, and Newsweek indicates that the race of journalists and their audience influenced news content. Emerge published more news of Africa and news of more African countries. It published more positive news and reported fewer crisis events. It explained troubles in South Africa in terms of competing economic and political forces rather than tribal conflicts, and it avoided stereotypes. Emerge reported a sense of connectedness between African-American groups and Africa.

Using self‐portrait photographs to understand self‐concepts of Chinese and American university students

This study examines differences between self‐concepts of Chinese and American university students. Both groups used 35mm cameras to show who they are. They wrote statements about the intended meaning of their best photo. The signs of other people, materials, and objects, and cultural ideas in each photograph were analyzed. Contrary to expectations, a higher percentage of Chinese students portrayed themselves as independent, and a higher percentage of Americans were oriented to other people. Consistent with expectations, Americans were more likely to be oriented towards materials and objects. Both groups were equally likely to be oriented towards cultural ideas.

Visual Communication: A Taxonomy And Bibliography

The study of visual communication is a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional effort. People who write on this topic come from mass communication (including photography, advertising, and news editorial areas), film and cinema studies, education, art and aesthetics, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, architecture and even archaeology. This rich melange of viewpoints is an asset because of the insights that come from cross-fertilization, however it causes some problems academically for those of us who teach visual communication because of a lack of any sense of common theory. This is not to suggest that there is or should be a central of core theory that organizes the field, however, it would be easier to order a curriculum, as well as a graduate program of study, if there were some notion of at least the important theories and scholars from the various disciplines that need to be covered. This project looks at the body of literature and the categories that emerge from the writings to develop a taxonomy of topics and some sense of the location of the most important, or at least the most frequently written about, areas of study. The objective is to collect the scholarly writing on the most central visual communication topics (mental imagery, visual thinking, the language metaphor, psychology), as well as peripheral topics that interweave with visual communication, such as sociology, anthropology, archaeology and architecture. But first lets look at a review of some of the major pieces of work similar to this effort. In terms of books, Probably the most important book specifically focused on visual communication theory is So Worths series of essays which appeared in his landmark book, Studying Visual Communication.1 Another important work is a book of readings called Visual Literacy edited by Moore and Dwyer, which comes from the educational media discipline but includes a number of essays that relate to basic visual communication theory, as well.2

Influences of politics and economics upon photographic content in Chinese newspapers

During the mid‐1980s political pressure upon Chinese journalists decreased, financial pressure upon their newspapers increased and photojournalism gained importance. This study compares the content of photographs in three ‘official’ and three hybrid ‘official‐commercial’ Chinese newspapers. Photographs were found to be less important in ‘official’ newspapers. Subjects and values of concern to government and Party leaders appeared more frequently in ‘official‐commercial’ papers. This study also shows that in a period of political and economic reform, diversity exists in photographic news content and that photographs frequently serve public interests.

Photographic content in Chinese newspapers

The purpose of this study is to understand forces shaping photographic content and to learn about the content of photographs in a variety of Chinese newspapers. Unstruc tured interviews were conducted with photojournalists and editors at eleven newspapers and Xinhua news agency. They show how politics, economics and journalistic routines shape content. Subject matter, direction and style categories were used to analyze photographs in a sample of nine papers - two with country-wide circulation and seven regional papers. It was found that entertainment was a primary function of photos. Economic news and educa tion/indoctrination also were common subjects. Almost none of the images were negative and more than half were posed.