Visual Communication. Janis Teruggi Page
engaging in this chapter, you'll be able to:
1 Understand the ethical dimensions of visual communication.
2 Identify the ethical dimensions of visual manipulation, framing, appropriation, and intellectual property.
3 Apply strategies for evaluating the ethics of visual communication that you or others create.
Chapter Overview
In this chapter, we'll outline useful approaches to ethical decision‐making in creating and consuming visuals. You’ll see real‐world examples including the ethics of using graphic photos and videos, issues related to memes and remixes as well as photo manipulation, and stereotyping. We'll discuss visual framing, the concept that any image or video is created and presented in ways that highlight some aspects of a phenomenon or event while downplaying or eliminating other aspects. These frames thus present readers and viewers with different meanings. A related issue is that of visual metaphors where viewers are invited to see one thing in terms of another. For example, a Nike ad showing a tennis star serving a grenade instead of a tennis ball highlights not only the star's explosive serve, but the Nike brand gear that presumably enables it. Finally, we work through a concrete example of applying an ethical framework to a health communication issue and introduce you to the Potter Box, a well‐known and frequently used approach to media ethics questions.
HOW VISUALS WORK: ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
LO1 Understand the ethical dimensions of visual communication
You can imagine how our quick assessments of others and their possible intentions toward us can be either adaptive or damaging. These instant evaluations are heuristics, or shortcuts, in thinking. They may also be forms of stereotyping. We may conclude that an older person is unimportant, an unattractive individual is less competent, or a member of a minority is somehow threatening (Belluck, 2009).
You likely have seen images of American indigenous people appropriated in professional and college sports logos, essentially promoting a warrior identity as well as commodifying it. In their edited volume, Images that Injure: Stereotypes in the Media, Ross and Lester provide a compilation of images and critiques on gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, religion, and nationality (Ross, 2011, p. 3). Sexualized stereotypes of both women and men have been heavily used in advertising.
Significantly, much research on visuals and stereotyping suggests that media depictions are more likely to stereotype African Americans as violent criminals, and people draw negative conclusions from those stereotypes (Welch, 2007). Some studies show that video newscasts are more likely to show African American men as angry and handcuffed, and others conclude that crime reporting often demonizes African Americans (Anderson, 1995; Gerbner, 2003). Welch (2007) writes, “these images are so widespread that it would not be surprising if much of American society has subconsciously come to accept the visual portrayal of Blacks as criminals in contemporary society” (p. 281–282). This doesn't mean that news media workers are purposely portraying minorities in a negative way. It does mean that they are likely interpreting events through stereotypes and shortcuts.
In the same vein, visuals have important political implications, particularly in an age of easily shared photos, symbols, and mashups. Research shows that looks matter. Ballew and Todorov (2007) asked participants to quickly glance at photos of real candidates who were unknown to the participants and then choose their favorites. It turned out that even though people in the study had no knowledge of the candidate they selected, their snap judgments predicted almost 70% of the winners of US House and Senate races. Thus, as Page and Duffy (2018) point out, in a world increasingly dominated by visual messages distributed largely in online settings, we tend to draw critical inferences about people based on very little real information.
The power of images to be interpreted as evidence of what's real and true also can be used for unethical purposes, intentionally, or unintentionally. Visuals embrace us, excite us, strike us, hurt us, lift us up, and make us yearn. The power of visuals and their representation of what looks like reality makes them particularly interesting and important to study from the standpoint of ethics.
Ethical issues in any field – and especially in media – arise when different interests and intentions collide. As Patterson and Wilkins (1997) put it, “Ethics is less about the conflict between right and wrong than it is about the conflict between equally compelling (or equally unattractive) values and the choices that must be made between them” (p. 3).
For example, a journalist may take a compelling photograph or video of a person who has been hurt or injured because they wish to highlight an important event or social issue or simply because it appears to be newsworthy. Some may argue that the most important ethical value in this situation is the journalist's duty to depict the truth. Others may say that showing graphic images is offensive and may invade the privacy of an individual or their family and thus would be ethically questionable.
FOCUS: Images of Tragedy: Afghan Victim
A New York Times (NYT) special report told of how an Afghan woman was falsely accused of burning a Koran at a Muslim shrine in Kabul. An enraged mob beat her to death and then burned the body. The story featured a video of cellphone clips depicting the gruesome and bloody assault with the warning it contained scenes of graphic violence (Rubin, 2015).
This powerful NYT piece stitches together cellphone clips posted on social media into a compelling story that emphasizes the apparent bloodlust of the mob, the relative indifference of the police, and the horrific abuse the woman undergoes. A voiceover briefly explains the source materials used in the story. What isn't immediately apparent is that, like all stories whether visual or in other media, the process of the gathering and organizing of story elements is largely invisible to the casual viewer.
Journalists compiled this story thus creating a narrative or plotline based on storytelling conventions, the perceived news value of the story, and the journalists' skills and beliefs about good reporting. In the newsgathering and editing process, various story elements are rearranged, deleted, or given less or more prominence. As Ernest Bormann wrote in describing the coverage of an American hostage crisis, the images create a specific rendering of reality: “The pictures … are stitched into dramatically improvised scenes. The viewer sees an artistic, interpretative, organized portrayal of social reality” (Bormann, 1982, p. 145). A different rendering of these very same videos might lead viewers to a different storyline and conclusion about what took place.
What does this have to do with ethics? First, “real” and relatively undoctored images can be presented in ways that draw viewers to different conclusions that may or may not be intended by the presenter. Second, different media outlets, news organizations in particular, have different guidelines about what types of images should or should not be disseminated (Brooks et al., 2020). At one time, media companies could largely control and limit the dissemination of gruesome, sexual, and graphic images. However, with the massive sharing capabilities of social media and non‐journalistic outlets, there are few ways to limit or protect viewers from seeing problematic images or protect people's right to privacy. For example, several times when terrorists beheaded captives, mainstream media did not run the video the terrorists took. However, within minutes the videos were widely available on the Internet.
Even the choice as to whether to run a photo or include a video in a news story or other media representation has ethical implications as well. Of course, the issue raised earlier about graphic video and imagery is one that journalists frequently confront. How many, if any, photographs of a tragedy should be included?
Foundations of Ethical Thought
Your grounding in ethics likely emerged from your upbringing – the mores of your family, religious institutions, school, and family – and even the media you use. It may be useful to begin with reflecting on your own beliefs and approaches to dealing with ethical dilemmas.