Visual Images in the Media

John Huxford, School of Communication, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract
This article offers a review and assessment of the polemics surrounding the nature of the visual image (i.e., a reproduced
sight) in the media (mass-produced communication), and of its social implications. The author explores the intellectual
history of the debate, which is most typically advanced as an opposition between the qualities and effects of the word, or text,
and of the image. The discussion is tracked across three key areas: child literacy and education, commercial and political
persuasion, and issues surrounding the news. It is also suggested that in an era when the image is seen to have gained
ascendency over text, digital tools and the power of the Internet bring potent new inuences on the way we create, consume,
and comprehend visual images.

The world is lled with visual images. Images appear on television and movie screens, billboards, posters, magazines,
newspapers, and computer monitors. While, as a specic eld
of academic study and teaching, visual communication is little
more than 50 years old, the properties and impact of the visual
image have been the subject of research for centuries across
a range of academic disciplines. In recent years, the emphasis
has moved away from theories of art toward a psychosocial
perspective that draws on research from semiotics, branches of
psychology, sociology and communications, and cultural
theory.
In this article, the discussion will focus on three key areas:
child literacy and education, commercial and political persuasion, and issues surrounding news, as well as on the repercussions of digital imagery and the way that the power of
cyberspace is changing the social role of visual communication.

the long-standing debate over the properties and functions of

the visual versus those of the word.

Visual Images versus the Word

There has long been debate over the social implications of the
image. Often this has centered on controversies that surround
certain visual media; most prominently, racial and gender
stereotyping, sexually explicit material, and violence as depicted on television, lm, the Web, and in video games. However,
this debate has also been advanced as an opposition between
the qualities and social effects of the word or text, and those of
the image, with the former typically being privileged over the
latter.

History of the Debate

The Age of the Image

Increasingly, it is argued that the word, once the dominant
medium, is being supplanted by the image. Civilization has
taken, in W.J.T Michells phrase, a pictorial turn (Mitchell,
1994: pp. 23). As Kellner suggests: We are living in one of
the most articial visual and image-saturated cultures in
human history, which makes understanding the complex
construction and multiple social functions of visual imagery
more important than ever before (2002: p. 81).
In earlier centuries, the balance between verbal and visual
representation strongly favored the word. Text dominated,
while images in books typically served in a subsidiary role as
illustrations. However, this status quo was challenged by the
emergence of the photographic process in the nineteenth
century, with photographs then spreading into newspapers and
advertisements. Film accelerated the process with the development of a series of audiovisual technologies, including
movies and television, tipping the balance between word and
image in favor of the latter.
Today digital imagery and streaming video in cyberspace
have added new dimensions to our ever-developing and
increasingly complex visual culture. Text and images interact in
new ways in the multimedia terrain of the Internet, reigniting

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 25

Whichever medium may be the most ubiquitous, the premise

on which this debate turns has always been the supposed
superiority of text over image, a bias informed by an intellectual tradition that stretches back centuries. (For a detailed
discussion, see Stephens, 1998.) The Bible, in associating the
Word with creation in Genesis while forbidding the production
of the graven image or any likeness, has long been used to
support this presumption. Even as the image has established
itself at the center of Western culture, writers and philosophers
from Plato to contemporary thinkers have remained critical of
the qualities and effects of the image compared to those of
the word.
This intellectual antipathy is prompted by a series of overlapping concerns. Partly, it is founded on a long-standing
suspicion of verisimilitude. In one view, such a capturing of
likeness evokes a high degree of truth. It is this perspective that
typically reects a traditional, although now contested, history
of art as the progress of visual reproduction toward an ever
more accurate reection of the natural world, an ideal established by the Romans, and one that nds its most perfect
expression in the photographic process.
However, verisimilitude has also driven a more negative
perspective; that what the visual image offers is not truth but
seductive illusion. A painter, Plato wrote, can deceive children

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Visual Images in the Media

and fools with the imitation of appearance, instead of

bringing truth or real things (1956: p. 463). Substantively,
this argument remains the root of one strain of criticism laid
against television and movies, that their illusionary realism
may offer an ideal vehicle for propaganda.
A second charge leveled against the visual image is that, with
the growth of technical reproduction, images devalue the
objects they represent. The uniqueness of the original is lost in
the deluge of visual copies. This argument is perhaps most
acute when what is being reproduced are images of cherished
buildings, statues and landmarks, and most especially, works
of art. When the Mona Lisa becomes a common sight in the
everyday world beyond the louver for example, on T-shirts
and advertising hoardings the quality of its presence,
in the words of Walter Benjamin, is always depreciated
(1969: p. 221).
A third charge involves the long-held belief that the
image speaks more directly to the emotions than to
the logical mind. Aquinas argued that images excite the
emotions more effectively aroused by things seen than by
things heard (cited in Freedberg, 1989: p. 162). This rousing
of emotions is seen as making the problems surrounding
pornography and the visual depiction of violence all the
more acute.
Finally, the images accessibility may distract the populace
from the more cerebral merits of the word, be it the religious
tract, improving essay, or newspaper text.

Visual Images and Child Literacy

If there is unease that the image is replacing the word for society
in general, this concern is heightened in debates over child
literacy. At different times, anxiety has centered on the
presumed ill effects on childrens reading abilities and habits of
a series of visual media, including movies, comic books, and
video games. However, most commonly criticized is television.
Researchers have offered a number of hypotheses concerning
the effects of television on child literacy and weighed the
empirical evidence for each.
A stimulation hypothesis argues that there is no conict
between images on television and words in print because
watching television stimulates or improves reading in the
young. This theory, although not widely held, rests largely on
studies concerned with the reading of a book based on a television show after watching the program, or more generally, on
children being prompted by television to research an interest.
However, in a study of the juvenile book market, only a small
percentage of children reported reading a book after seeing or
hearing of it through television. Similarly, the ndings from
other studies imply that any interests that are aroused by television tend to be short-lived.
More systematically studied are variations of a reduction
hypothesis, where the consumption of television is predicted to
have a negative impact on reading. There are ve common
variations of this hypothesis. First, a displacement hypothesis
argues that television viewing takes time away from reading.
However, studies have shown no conclusive evidence of this,
indicating instead that time given to reading, although always
scant, has remained remarkably stable.

Second, the passivity hypothesis argues that television

viewing causes children to become mentally indolent and so
less inclined to read. Although studies have shown that television does require less mental effort than reading, it is argued
that synthesizing visual and audio information engages children in a process that is active, not passive. Third, the retardation hypothesis, an associated theory that argues television
viewing deteriorates the brain, is seen as implausible for the
same reason.
A fourth variety of reduction hypothesis is concentration
deterioration, which suggests that a childs ability to concentrate
is weakened by television. This too, although popular among
critics, has found little scientic support.
Finally, anti-school hypotheses argue that children come to
expect school to be as entertaining and immediately gratifying
as television programs, and when it fails to meet these expectations, pupils lose motivation. Once more, the evidence for
this is contradictory and inconclusive.

Visual Images in Education

In contrast to the attribution of negative effects to television
viewing, some educationalists have called for the visual image
to play a larger role in school curriculums which, traditionally,
have been dominated by the word. Despite the criticism of
television in general, some educational shows such as
Sesame Street have achieved strong reputations.
More recently and despite the negative issues surrounding
some games there has been increasing interest in the potential
of video games as educational tools. Some scholars have
argued that such games may teach not only specic educational
content but also foster the ability to learn by stimulating
cognitive development. Proponents point to the focus on
problem solving that is central to many games, and it has been
argued that video games may even encourage children to
develop a basic understanding of scientic methodology, in
which hypotheses are formed and tested, as they seek to
understand and manipulate the game world. (For a detailed
examination of these issues, see Brown, 2008.)
In broader terms, this move toward the educational value of
images may represent a belief in the benets of acquiring what
has been termed visual literacy. The view is that irrespective of
content, engagement with visual media may lead to the
development of mental skills applicable beyond the understanding of the medium itself. To some extent, this argument is
predicated on the widely inuential work of Howard Gardner
who, in developing a theory of multiple intelligences, argued
that different modes of communication are benecial to the
development of different types of intelligence.
However, the theory that visual imagery may encourage
both specic cognitive development and a distinctive worldview is more generally a reection of similar beliefs regarding
textual and verbal communication, as expressed, most notably,
by linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. The
perspective may also be traced to theories associated with
Marshall McLuhan, who links cognition to the technical characteristics of varying media.
From this perspective, it is suggested that television-based
teaching may have a positive effect on a number of areas of
cognition, including the formation of a distinctive worldview,

Visual Images in the Media

analytic reasoning, and spatial intelligence: the ability to

envision mentally, for example, what a shape might look like
from various angles. It is also suggested that exposure to certain
visual media, such as advertisements that employ metaphors,
may encourage and develop abstractive and analogical
thinking.
However, it is argued that because images primarily function as analogs of reality and are so less inclined to divide the
perceived world into particular categories in the manner characteristic of language, the development of a specic worldview
through exposure to visual imagery appears unlikely. (This is
not to say that the uses to which the visual image may be put
e.g., to depict violence on television may not have signicant
impact on ones worldview.)
Similarly, it is judged improbable that engagement with
visual forms will enhance a viewers skills in analytic thinking,
since images lack many of the propositional elements of
language (for example, it is difcult to make statements in the
negative through images, e.g., there is no more ice cream).
While a stronger case may be made for the connection between
visual imagery and spatial intelligence, evidence for these
benets is also weak. Finally, it is argued that aspects of
abstractive or analogical thinking may indeed prot from
viewing certain visual material, although the argument remains
controversial (see Messaris, 1994 for a full discussion).
More generally, there is a growing body of opinion that,
rather than teaching new cognitive skills, the representational
conventions of images are founded on informational cues that
people routinely learn to interpret through their visual experiences in real life. This calls into the question the very existence
of a distinctive visual literacy based on cognitive abilities
acquired through exposure to mediated imagery.

Properties of Visual Images

Overall, there is scant evidence then, that visual images most
typically in the form of television are either detrimental to
child literacy, or signicantly contribute to distinctive cognitive
development.
However, it is clear that the image does possess distinctive
qualities. Peirces classication of signs into iconic, indexical,
and symbolic (Pierce, 1991) is seen as an important key to
these properties. Images that bear a resemblance to some aspect
of reality are examples of iconic signs. At the same time, the
photograph may be dened as an index; a sign that has some
physical connection to the object or event to which it refers,
(such as ngerprints or footprints) since it is produced by the
physical effect of reected light.
These features clearly set the image apart from the word.
Iconic signs have little role in language and indexicality is
entirely absent. Conversely, the visual image would normally
not rely on the type of arbitrary conventions that link signier
(representation) with signied (what is represented) in the
manner that constitutes the symbolic mode most characteristic
of language.
Another crucial distinction can be made between words and
visual images. Whereas verbal communication possesses
detailed conventions governing word order (or syntax) that
facilitate the linking of concepts, there is no such formal

171

convention for combining images into larger meanings,

although those who work with images, such as artists, may
develop their own. Images exhibit what is termed syntactic
indeterminacy that increases their ambiguity as carriers of
meaning (Messaris, 1997).
These distinct features have important consequences for the
roles that the visual image plays within society. While it is
difcult for images to convey precise statements about the
objects they represent (e.g., the man no longer enjoys
sarcasm), still the images characteristic iconicity, together with
less pronounced but exible symbolic properties, have allowed
the medium to convey certain, descriptive information with
a precision unmatched by words. For example, a range of
scientic elds have been advanced through the use of detailed
depictions and diagrams.
Equally, the visual image has been a boon in the development of user-friendly computers, where iconic representations,
such as scissors and folders, have been used to replace lines of
text. At the same time, photographic indexicality has become
a vital component in the creation of historical records.
However, these properties may also have troubling
consequences.

Visual Images and Persuasion

Iconicity, indexicality, and syntactic indeterminacy bring
distinctive properties to visual persuasion, be it set to
commercial or political purposes. In an extensive study of these
issues, Messaris (1997) offers a broad range of devices through
which the advertising image may engage attention and mold
attitudes. Iconic representations of physical appearance and
interpersonal behavior may reproduce real-world visual cues
associated with a series of emotional responses; including
sexual interest and excitement. This prompting of emotion is
central to advertising strategies that seek to associate positive
feelings with the possession or consumption of products (see,
for example, Williamson, 1978). Further, iconic devices that
manipulate the viewers point of view (such as close-ups or
high and low angles) can incite a series of other responses,
including curiosity and trust.
The ability of iconicity to communicate information quickly
and with relatively little mental effort may contribute to
another advantage the image may have in persuasion. Some
cognitive psychologists believe that visual images are typically
processed peripherally rather than centrally in ways that
may decrease the likelihood of viewers engaging their full
critical and analytical faculties, especially when the speed of the
message leaves little time for reection.
The truthfulness implied by indexicality is also a critical
ingredient in visual persuasion whenever a photographic image
is offered as proof of an advertisers claims. However, visual
images may readily be made to lie through the application of
a wide range of techniques, from the staging of photographs to
airbrushing to improve appearances. Moreover, digital technology has become a powerful aid to those who would practice
such visual deception.
Finally, the syntactic indeterminacy of the image may also
have important consequences that make it more useful in
persuasion than the explicit meanings offered by words. For
example, advertisers may take advantage of this property to

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Visual Images in the Media

imply associations or statements that they would be unwise to

state verbally (such as the association of cigarette smoking with
healthy activity).
The implications of these properties have led to
a heightened attention to the exploration of image production and the messages imbedded within them, most
commonly through the perspective of critical analysis. Critical cultural analysis views society as a contested terrain,
a battleground for domination and hegemony between
competing gender, race, sex, ethnic, class, and other forces
(Kellner, 2002: p. 85). From this perspective, codes of
power are embedded in all visual images to varying degrees
(Sperling, 2011: p. 28).
These concerns focus on a range of issues and forms of
media, for example, the sexual objectify of women in music
videos, celebrity gossip magazines, and video games.
Two of the most debated arenas, however, remain the
persuasive effects of imagery in political and commercial
communication, and in the news.

Visual Images and Politics

While political advertising has existed, in its modern form,
since at least the 1820s, television ads have now become
a primary source of political information. Television has been
accused of having a number of detrimental consequences for
the political process. These include, in a political equivalent to
the displacement theory associated with child literacy (see
above), distracting the populace from civic involvement.
However, the area of most concern with regard to the visual
image is its effects within political advertising and televisual
campaigning.
The potency of the visual image in political persuasion is
thought to have been most graphically displayed in a debate
between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. It is reported that
the majority of those who saw the 1960 debate on television
judged Kennedy the victor, while most who listened on radio
thought Nixon had won. Typically, this result has been taken to
indicate that the more attractive image that Kennedy presented
was the deciding factor, even though other inuences have
been offered including the possibility that it was radio that
may have favored Nixons patterns of delivery, while exaggerating Kennedys Boston accent in a manner that repelled
listeners (Schudson, 1995).
The use of visual imagery for persuasive purposes becomes
most intense in political advertising. Although the public is
becoming more skilled at reading visual cues, it is argued that
viewers usually do not take the time to consider the way these
cues may be attempting to manipulate their attitudes, making
the visual element of political ads the most crucial.
Political advertisements use many of the same visual strategies as their commercial counterparts, although often exhibiting a strong reliance on iconic visual effects. Patriotic appeals
are common in the political advertisement or campaign, and
the use of certain visual symbols including the national ag
has been found to be especially prevalent. Equally, the use of
family imagery, such as images of spouses and of children,
remains common.

The iconicity of visual imagery has been held responsible

for other political strategies that accentuate appearance over
content. Many make extensive use of devices that appear to be
modeled on peoples real-world experiences of interpersonal
space. For example, politicians interviewed on television will
typically turn toward the camera, and therefore toward the
viewer, in order to imitate the real-world appearance of a direct
and candid approach. Similarly, the use of color to create
emotional impact is widespread in political advertisements.
Bright colors are used to connote positive images, while gray or
black and white are frequently employed in attack ads to help
prompt a negative response.

Visual Images and the News

Equally controversial has been the inuence of the visual image
in news. The entry of the image into an arena that had traditionally been the province of the word was originally viewed
with consternation, both by journalists and by many outside of
the profession, as the use of visual material developed from
artwork through woodcut engraving to early photographs.
Visual images continued to be regarded as a medium that
bypassed the reasoning mind and, as such, appeared to
threaten journalisms Enlightenment heritage. While the
photograph was held in higher esteem in the picture magazine,
this had little impact on its critics.
Yet at the same time, the photographic record, as metaphor,
as well as in practice, came to underpin the journalistic enterprise. By the mid-nineteenth century, there was widespread
typication of the newspaper as a daguerreotype (an early
camera) of the social and natural world, with the indexicality of
the process being used to exemplify, and give credence to,
claims of journalistic objectivity (Zelizer, 1998: p. 9).
However, Photoshop and other digital techniques have
made it increasingly easy to falsify photographs, with such
practices nding their way into the news. More broadly, critics
have argued that the apparent immediacy of the news photograph works to render invisible the human agency involved in
its production. In practice, every image is subject to selection,
interpretation, and, often, alteration as it works its way through
the news process.
The news photograph embodies the perspective of the
photographer who selects a particular camera angle; the page
designer or editor who frequently selects one shot from a large
number taken of an event and who may then crop the image;
and the headline or caption writer where the photograph will
be combined with, and interpreted through, text, while
simultaneously being bounded within the newspapers policy
on how photographs may be deployed. At each stage the image
is made to conform to a certain narrative structure a news
angle or theme with its meaning inevitably being colored and
manipulated by that association. As Stuart Hall observes:
News photos operate under a hidden sign marked this really
happened, see for yourself. Of course, the choice is this
moment of an event as against that, of this person rather than
that, of this angle rather than any other. Indeed the selection of
this photographed incident to represent a whole complex chain
of events and meaning, is a highly ideological procedure
(Hall, 1973: p. 241).

Visual Images in the Media

Similarly, in response to claims that the photography offers

a transparent codeless window on the world of newsworthy
events, scholars have pointed to the use of photographs, in all
news media, as being a practice based on cultural codes of
understanding (such as an eagle representing freedom in
America), as well to the connotative properties inherent in the
practice itself. Roland Barthes (1977), among others, has
argued that the photograph fullls not only a denotative (or
referential) but also a connotative (or interpretive) function,
which undermines its claim to be unmediated truth.
Visual symbolism is frequently used in news to carry
messages that stretch far beyond the photographs referential
qualities, with such techniques used to provide photographic
validation of abstract issues and qualities that cannot, in
the normal sense, be validated visually (Huxford, 2001:
p. 45). Huxford offers three classications of photographic
symbolism routinely employed in the press on both sides of
the Atlantic; temporal, in which time frames are evoked and
utilized within the newspage; metaphorical, where analogical
associations are employed; and synthetic which entails gross
distortions of reality.
In all these ways, the news photograph, be it on the page,
computer screen, or in broadcast lm, may be far from either
neutral or objective.
More recently, the focus of research has shifted away from
issues surrounding the veracity of the news photograph, and
toward the social and cultural functions that news photography
may fulll. This development highlights the ritual work of
journalism in social life, specically its role in creating and
sustaining both communal and individual identities. The
unifying work of ritual and of ritualistic journalism becomes
particularly crucial when death or destruction threatens the
social order. Research following this line of inquiry has
included Dayan and Katzs exploration of the live coverage of
events of signicant social meaning; what is described as the
contests, conquests, and coronations that relate to one or
more of the core values of society (1992: p. 199). Similarly it is
argued that news images may be translated into lived images
during community ritual, being appropriated and reworked in
ways that may empower and heal the community. For example,
the striking and dramatic news imagery that was a central focus
of the attack on the United States in 9/11 later reemerged in
new ways in local carnivals and parades, with oats featuring
pictures and models of the Twin Towers restored to their
former glory (Cooneld and Huxford, 2009).

Digital Images
The ascendency of the image and the controversy over its effects
in such areas as education, politics, and news have been
accelerated and intensied by the rise of digital media.
While the Web has, arguably, given fresh impetus to text
and allowed the word and image to interact in new ways, Web
designers frequently give more space and visual weight to
imagery. Moreover, streaming video is gaining increasing
importance on the Web as technology and bandwidth improve.
A signicant aspect of this new digital frontier is the manner
in which it has fostered expertise in creating and manipulating
digital imagery, turning users from passive viewers of images

173

into active participants. The development of digital photography has prompted a substantial leap in the number of
pictures being produced. By 2004, 28 billion digital photos
then were being taken annually in the U.S., 6 billion more
photos were shot on lm, even though twice as many people
owned lm-roll cameras than digital (Murray, 2008: p. 152).
The downloading and placing of such photographs on home
pages, social networking sites, and blogs is now ubiquitous,
while many individuals are also producing their own video
clips, segments of animation, and even short movies. At the
same time, a host of online communities that hone and spread
this digital expertise have emerged in recent years. As Sperling
argues, Todays students also form individual identities and
act online; they are at home with the Interwebs visual architectures and intellectual platforms; and they actively embrace
the informality of its connections, its unstable transactions, the
uidity of its borders, and its shifting and disorienting discursive spaces (2011: p. 28).
While the Web has been described as a digital utopia
(Rosen, 2001: p. 318), many of the issues surrounding the
deceptive and potentially damaging effects of visual representation have followed images into cyberspace. Digital media has
provided those who would perpetrate visual fakery with an
arsenal of increasingly subtle and effective tools. At the same
time, the range of visual networks through which todays
online users move and the speed of those operations raise the
likelihood that many images will register subconsciously, as
unexamined beliefs and assumptions are prompted and
absorbed.
However, the apparent vulnerability of the digital audience to visual trickery has been questioned. Some scholars
argue that the key feature of todays post-photographic age,
where the digital image has replaced traditional emulsionbased photography, is that all pictures are seen as articial
representations of reality and are thus treated with increasing
skepticism (e.g., Farid, 2009: pp. 4244). Others are less
sanguine. Messaris (2012), while acknowledging that the
Webs digital networks have made it easier for the detection
of visual manipulation to be publicized, also points out that
awareness of the likelihood of digital manipulation does not
necessarily translate into an ability to detect its use in
specic instances.
Examples of digital manipulation of photographs that go
undetected can be found in two key areas discussed in this
article: political communication and news coverage. For
instance, one experiment staged at Stanford University at the
time of the 2004 Presidential election has implications for
political persuasion. In this, photographs of the facial features
of test subjects were subtly combined with the faces of either
Republican George Bush or Democrat John Kerry. The subjects
were then asked to make a preference between the photographs
of the two politicians.
Researcher Jeremy Bailenson and his colleagues found that
while the choices of highly partisan voters were unaffected by
this manipulation, among those with less certain political
preference the facial morphs had the effect of swinging
peoples choices in the direction of the morph that included
their own facial features. This held true even though the
subjects demonstrated no conscious awareness of the manipulation (Bailenson et al., 2008).

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Visual Images in the Media

Similarly, there are instances in news, as Messaris points

out, when even journalists have been fooled by digitally
doctored photographs. For example, when a fake photograph
of the dead Osama bin Laden was posted online by unknown
sources, the image was used on a number of well-regarded
news sites before being exposed as a hoax.
Summarizing this debate, Messaris suggests, In addressing this issue a researcher would have to go beyond the
methodology of traditional surveys. The evidence would
have to come from the examination of peoples spontaneous
reactions to images. Without a systematic look at such data,
all claims about the effects of digital media on the publics
attitudes towards images will necessarily remain highly
conjectural (2012: p. 10).

See also: Advertising and Advertisements; Advertising: Effects;

Advertising: General; British Cultural Studies; Computer Games
and Academic Achievement; Educational Media: Potentials for
Learning; Film and Video Industry; Journalism and Journalists;
Journalism; Mass Media, Representations in; Media Effects on
Children; Media Effects; Media Events; Media and Child
Development; New Media, News Production and Consumption;
News: General; Photography as a Medium; Political
Advertising; Political Communication; Semiotics; Social Media;
Television: General; Violence and Media.

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