Visual Communication 2003 Abstract
Visual Communication Division
TV Literacy and Academic/Artistic Giftedness: Understanding Time Leaps and Time Lags • Robert Abelman, Cleveland State • This investigation reinforces the conceptualization of television viewing as a learned activity by highlighting the interrelatedness of children’s linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual skills for accurate comprehension of television’s most basic narrative device-temporal sequencing. It also explores the impact of highly divergent skills and abilities by sampling children school-labeled as academically gifted and artistically gifted.
Eye for Beauty: Male College Students’ Exposure to Still Images and Evaluations of Thinness and Beauty in Women • Kimberly L. Bissell and Peiqin Zhou, Alabama• Although researchers have much to learn about the factors that increase the risk of disordered eating in women, what researchers have suggested is that many women internalize what they perceive to be others’ view of their own bodies. More specifically, it is suggested that part of the sexual objectification of women in this culture comes from men.
Screen Size, Source Credibility, and Presence: Audience Reactions to Televised Presidential Debates • Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Kimberly A. Neuendorf, and Leo W. Jeffres, Cleveland State • An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of both television screen size and presence on audiences’ perceived source credibility of presidential candidates. Fifty-five participants rated source credibility of both 2000 Presidential candidates, Gore and Bush, after viewing segments from the presidential debates prior to the election. The results demonstrate that screen size has some effect on perceptions of source credibility. The findings are consistent with previous presence research demonstrating larger images increase viewer sensations of presence.
More Than Words Alone: Broadcasters’ Nonverbal Communication In the First 24 Hours of the September 11th Terrorist Attacks • Renita Coleman and Denis Wu, Louisiana State • A content analysis the first 24 hours of 9-11 shows that TV new journalists were not objective in their nonverbal behavior. They showed significantly more positive and negative expressions than neutral expressions despite a journalistic commitment to objectivity. The time of day mattered, with broadcasters showing more negative expressions during the second 8-hours of coverage, as did length of shot with broadcasters who were on camera for longer consecutive periods showing more positive and negative expressions through nonverbal channels.
Female Newspaper Photographers’ Perception of Women Photojournalists • Ken Heinen and Mark Popovich, Ball State • Sixteen female newspaper photojournalists completed Q sorts containing 57 statements about the current role of women photojournalists at their own newspaper. The women sorted themselves into two factors that were labeled: Egalitarians and Feminists. The Egalitarians believed that women were equal to men in all facets of photojournalism, but they had some doubts about the commitment of women to the profession.
Analyzing Sequential Art: Visual Narrative Techniques in Calvin and Hobbes • Sharon M. Hope, Purdue • Comics and comic strips are two examples of a unique art form best described as “sequential art,” a rarely studied but important cultural phenomenon whose usefulness as a communication tool is underestimated. As a means to better appreciate and apply this art form, this paper examines the history of newspaper comics, then uses several Sunday Calvin and Hobbes comic strips to identify four visual elements that contribute to an effective sequential art narrative.
News Images of the Terrorist Attacks: Framing September 11th and its Aftermath Thru the Pictures of the Year International Competition • Yung-Soo Kim and C. Zoe Smith, Missouri • This study examines the visual coverage of the 2001 terrorist attacks by analyzing the 382 images submitted to the special September 11th news category of the 2002 POYi competition, allowing us not only to examine how photojournalists covered this unprecedented story, but to explore what they thought was their best work from this very stressful news event. Submissions fell into three main themes: events, aftermath, and firefighters and accounted for 93% of the entries.
An Ideological Critique of the American Frontier Myth in the Photography of Arthur Rothstein and Alan Berner • Brian W. Kratzer, Missouri • This research project compares photographs of the American frontier by Arthur Rothstem during the Depression and Alan Berner during the 1990s using the method of ideological critique The photographs, or cultural products, are framed by the frontier myth This framing. allows comparison of the myth in these photographs that are connected by subject matter. The goal is to interpret how the photographers perceived the West during their era in relation to the goals of their individual photography projects.
Blind or Annoyed? Research Implications of Banner Blindness • Sang Yeal Lee, Pennsylvania State • It has been widely observed that the advertising effectiveness on the World Wide Web has been continually declining since its launch in 1994. One contributing factor to this decline is users’ inattention to banner ads, which some researchers call “banner blindness.” Drawing on visual cognition and information processing perspectives, this paper explores how Web users may develop skills to ignore or avoid banners.
Engaging the News: Visual Journalism and Innovation • Paul Martin Lester, California State, Fullerton • New media journalism presentations are largely extensions of a familiar model from newspaper traditions. Social constructivism theory helps establishes the need while diffusion of innovations research helps establish the categories for identifying types of news consumers. The paper identifies technological innovations that each type of user might respond to and shows how producers and users can work together to formulate ways of story telling as taught by visual journalism instructors that help promote excellence and engagement.
Personal Impact Assessment of Advertising Culture of “Whiteness”: Facial Skin Color Preferences Among Urban Chinese Women • Angela K.Y. Mak, Oregon • This paper examines a key determinant of female beauty among urban Chinese women: the preferred whiter facial skin tone color. By using Williams’ (2000a) Personal Impact Assessment, it investigates how the use of vivid images on recent whitening skin care product television advertising helps shape both the individual and social values among urban Chinese women in relation to the Chinese proverb, “One whiteness can substitute for three physical unattractivenesses.”
Visual Symbols on the Web and Their Meaning: Comparing Social Movement Groups in the United States and South Korea • Michael McCluskey and Seungahn Nah, Wisconsin-Madison • Many social movement organizations use Web sites to communicate with members and the public. Visual images that communicate a cultural meaning – collective identity, emotional appeals or moral appeals – may be an important element of these sites and further movement goals. Visual images from four types of movement-group Web sites, in the U.S. and Korea, were analyzed. Collective identity was more common on Korean sites, while moral and emotional appeals were most common among white power groups.
Slice-of-Life Moments as Visual “Truth”: Normal Rockwell, Feature Photography, and American Values in Pictorial Journalism • Andrew Mendelson and Carolyn Kitch, Temple • To photojournalists, the purpose of feature photographs is to reveal something enduring or timeless in the human spirit. Such images require their creators to find deeper meaning in the everyday. Before (and alongside) the emergence of feature photography, such work was also the province of the artists whose illustrations filled the pages of popular magazines.
A Critical Vision of Gender in 2002 Campaign Ads • Janis Teruggi Page, Missouri • This qualitative study explores how repetitive visual images in political candidates’ ads reflect gender traits and issues, and analyzes how visuals reinforce stereotypes, break through them, or convey gender balance. Using 2002 Illinois campaign spots as texts, the author employs film theorists’ mise-en-scene framework and rhetorical depiction theory to construct a coding framework for visual rhetorical analysis. Results reveal gender cross-over and balance, and suggest how visuals establish authenticity or deceit.
The Big Story: September 12, 2001 Front Page Design, News and Picture Selection A Study of Reader Preferences • Thomas Ansel Price, II and Jenny Lesselbaum, Ball State • We watched in horror as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground again and again on television screens across the country. What responsibility did newspapers have to their readers in providing a second day look at the attacks? This study of readers’ feelings found that readers are attracted to design, but expect more of the human aspect of the story, the causes and the results than they get from television and most newspapers.
A Semiotic Exegesis of World Wide Web Advertising: The Search For a Contextual Understanding of Digital Design • William Pritchard, Shippensburg • Via a semiotic reading of 100 Web advertisements, this study composes a culturally astute understanding of on-line advertising. Web advertisements are analyzed within, and against, the larger cultures of digital and traditional representation. Findings point to the inherent limitations of on-line design in compari-son to traditional print design, arid present the workings of a new culture of advertising defined by a universal equity among large and small advertisers and a palatable straying from traditional professional advertising codes.
Immersive 360-Degree Panoramic Video Environments: Research on “User-Directed News” Applications • Larry Pryor, Susanna Gardner, Albert A. Rizzo, and Kambiz Ghahremani, Southern California • Advanced Panoramic Video (PV) camera systems serve as useful tools for creating virtual news scenarios. The development of PV content for journalism will require an understanding of how users observe, interact with, enjoy and benefit from this technology. The paper, based on our research using a 360-degree camera, includes a discussion of virtual environments in journalism, problems of “realism” and accuracy, the role of the journalist in virtual spaces and user-control of the video perspective.
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