Week Twelve - And So What I Change The Sun's Position?

Photojournalism, as have been regarded by many, is ‘reporting the visual information via various media’ (Newton, 2001, page 33). It is considered as being able to record graphic evidence of the events happening across the world and have means of passing this ‘information’ to anywhere on Earth. It also possesses the power to change the fate of the world and said as an ‘eyewitness to history’ (as cited by Alia, 2004, page 108). These articles are considered ‘trustworthy’…until the age of technology comes along.

These days, it is of no problem to change whatever aspect of the photographs so to suit the photographers’ taste or purpose. This is of course, against the ethics of a photojournalist.

Why are ethics important? What is so wrong with changing the components of a picture if the end-result is a more-dramatic image, enough to shake the world? Is not that what photojournalists are doing?

Take a look at this picture:

Notice how the Times’ image is darker than the Newsweek’s version? This cold lead to racial stereotyping and whether or not O. J. Simpson is guilty, it is still unethical to put him under the ‘guilt light’.

The trust that has been reserved for photojournalism could be shattered as with the ‘doctored’ picture, who is going to believe it is the representation of the truth? And this is why ethics are important in photojournalism. Photojournalism should not try to mislead the viewers and try to represent the ‘truth’ as truthfully as possible.

References:

§         Alia, V. (2004). Media Ethics and Social Change. Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=Fl8UgxrnHtoC&lpg=PA108&dq=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&f=false

§         Newton, J. H. (2001). The burden of visual truth: the role of photojournalism in mediating reality. Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=Y2nbX-ecV2YC&lpg=PA34&dq=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&f=false

§         Wheeler, T. (2002). Phototruth or Photofiction?: Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age. Routledge Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=c0kjsrfz2XwC&lpg=PA38&dq=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&f=false

§         Wright, T. (2004). The Photography Handbook. Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=-fGFXROq2qoC&lpg=PA178&dq=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&pg=PA190#v=onepage&q=ethics%20in%20photojournalism&f=false

Week Eleven - A Five-Minute Analyzing a Graph = A Day Reading A Novel

If informational graphs have never been created, news would have to extend its showing twice the length the usual news time as just the weather forecast reader would take almost half-a-hour perhaps to inform viewers of weather patterns, and that would just for a small country. What I am trying to imply here is that informational graphs help us to reduce our time to analyze what perhaps a very long text and make it easier for us to understand the text.

For example, the graph below shows the time during Napoleon’s march to conquer Moscow:

This graph is hailed as one of the best informational graphs in history, as without confusing the readers, one could ‘read’ it and get the same information as those who have read the text-book on the same event.

                                                           

Another example of informational graph below:

Instead of handing out flyers with texts on it, the advertisers decide to use graphic presentations of what they are trying to say, aided only by short texts. And it is effective – the advert look attractive and would surely interest people to have a look.

And if you start to think that there is no way a scientific graph could look interesting, think again:

What might take a whole text book to explain now only is presented in one easy-to-understand page.

Informational graphs are not only for grown-ups, even children could understand it:

There are a lot more of these kinds of graphs out there and instead of the stereotyping of them trying to make our lives miserable, we have actually taking them for granted, not noticing how much time in our lives have they saved.

References:

§         Lester, P. M. (1995). Informational Graphics (page 187 – 211). California: Wadsworth Publishing.

§         Petterson, R. (1993). Visual Information (2^nd edition) (page 169 – 175). New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.

§         George-Palilonis, J. (2006). A practical guide to graphics reporting: information graphics for print, web & broadcast. Focal Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=9mHSkAxKGfEC&lpg=PP1&dq=informational%20graphics&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=informational%20graphics&f=false

Week Ten - The Authenticity of Self

In the era of cyberspace, people could recreate their life through a whole brand new identity. A shy person could appear bold and adventurous on the online society, and a ‘rotten-to-the-core’ person could ‘start anew’, perhaps being the goody-two-shoes while playing a massively-multiplayer-online- role-playing-game (MMORPG). One who is not satisfied with its look could change itself into a beauty wit just a matter of clicks and a moderate-income person could be a multi-billionaire online. With all these advances then, a question is raised – which is the real ‘I’ then? The one that keeps clicking on the mouse in front of the computer screen or the one that have successfully with grace slayed a dragon and conquer a kingdom?

The ambiguity of identity in the cyberspace has been of the interest of communication analysts, as not just one could ‘renew’ its identity, one could also steals someone’s else identity and proclaimed it its own (Whittaker, 2002, page 166). The picture below practically summarizes of this suggestion of identity ambiguity:

In one instances, a male psychiatrist once has created a persona named ‘Julie’, a supposedly-disabled woman who has built a wide-support system online and has managed to deceive a lot of people regarding ‘her’ true identity (as cited by Whittaker, 2002, page 166). And identity thefts are not uncommon too; there have been a lot of cases of where the unsuspecting victims do not know that illegal things are done using their name and only realize of it when it is already too late.

Apparently, cyberspace makes everything about identity ‘fragile’ and ‘changeable’. Sexuality, gender and physical appearance are at the ‘mercy’ of the owner as people use cyberspace as a place experimenting with new identities (Bell, 2002, page 126). The online users could live out their fantasy while still having the benefit of no one knows who they really are.

It is not rare to see a charming prince in an online game happens to be a very ordinary man who does not stand out at all, or even the prince turns out to be a woman who has a lot of time in her hands. Hence, it is not absurd to say that whatever avatars you see online might as well as be all fakes – ‘never judge a book by its cover’. However, among online community, if one reveals real self to everyone, not just the person receives respect and trust, this may lead to the creation of a close-knit community as others would may do the same and hence, building trust among the members (Fung, 2006, page 136). There is also an instance where a young woman fell in love with her saviour during her usual adventure in an online game and somewhere later, both of these players married in real life, both have accepted each other’s weaknesses that their avatar would have not possessed.

Altogether, while it seems that no online identities are real, some see pass that wall and accept whatever is presented, perhaps believing that whatever values the avatars are having, the owners may also possess the same qualities although hidden.

References:

§         Bell, D. (2002). An Introduction to Cybercultures. Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=MRNlLK6ZlMYC&lpg=PA113&dq=identities%20in%20cyberculture&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q=identities%20in%20cyberculture&f=false

§         Fung, A. (2006). Bridging Cyberlife and Real Life: A Study of Online Communities in Hong Kong (page 129 – 139). In Silver, D. M. and Adrienne Steve, J. (editors), Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: New York University Press. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from UBD Ebrary Website.

§         Robins, K. (2000). Cyberspace and the World We Live In ( page 77 – 95). In Bell, D. and Kennedy, B.M. (editors), The Cyberculture’s Reader. London: Routledge.

§         Whittaker, J. (2002). The Internet: The Basics. Routledge. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=9Dm4kB4wVz8C&lpg=PA163&dq=identities%20in%20cyberculture&pg=PA169#v=onepage&q=identities%20in%20cyberculture&f=false

Week Nine - East in the Eyes of West

Cultural literacy could be defined as ‘both a knowledge of meaning systems and an ability to negotiate those systems within different cultural contexts’ (Schirato and Yell, 2000, page 1). And having cultural literacy, it is then possible to discern what is hidden in media. And in the examples that I would give below, cultural literacy enables me to realize of the stereotyping of East through the eyes of West.

Below are clips from ‘The World of Suzie Wong’:

At once glance, everything seems normal. Man meets woman and falls in love and after experiencing several obstacles, both then decides to spend life with each other. However, upon analyzing the characters more deeply, it is more like West meets East and saves the latter from further ‘degradation’. This could be explained by a theory known as ‘Orientalism’.

Orientalism is a study of the discourse of the Orient exploring the systems of representations that formed stereotyped ideas and images of the Orient in the West (Said, 1995). Accordingly, West views themselves as saviour of the ‘uncivilized’ East and as if to prove their standing, the movie then shows how ‘barbaric’ and ‘uncultured’ the East are (here, presented by the Chinese), from their usage of broken English to the ‘violent’ husbands to local women whom seemed to be all are working as prostitutes and ‘hungry’ for Western men ‘enlightenments’. And this movie is not alone in showing this phenomena; below is another example of this, the dinner scene from 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom':

One who is ‘brainwashed’ with all the stereotypes of East may find this convincing and is hardened even more in its belief. However, for those in the know, almost immediately the exaggeration could be detected and one could not help but wonder if this is the effect of Orientalism.

Another video below also presents the same thing:

Again, West meet East and helps the latter with their objective. Although it may seem that the protagonist is being ‘Easternized’, it does not change the fact that the samurais need a Western man before they could change their fate, for better or worse. And if examining the movie posters and images of this movie, most would shown the Western protagonist is the one leading the other samurais and the one branded ‘the last samurai’. How ironic is that.

The video below also shows the same thing:

It is almost the same as ‘The Last Samurai’, and the first thing that I have realized is that the title does not fit the movie at all. The movie is called ‘Karate Kid’ but from what I can see, the protagonist is learning kung-fu in China to be able to protect himself against the local bullies. Karate is in Japan and kung-fu is in China, and apparently people who are heavily influenced by the East-West stereotypes think that these two distinct martial arts are the same thing, just as that they could not distinguish between any East person as all of the are ‘look-alike’.

And apparently, the most highly-praised movie ‘Avatar’ has also debated of having the same kind of stereotypes conceals within the complex narrative:

The protagonist is human and the other are the Na’vis; while humans are cultured and advanced society, the Na’vis on the other hand are more ‘natural’ and ‘wild’. According to Orientalism, West is cultured and advanced while East is more ‘natural’ and ‘wild’, closer to natures than the former does. Knowing this, it is not hard to draw the parallel between the different species in the movie with the different races here on earth.

While watching films and movies usually serve as entertainment and mean nothing more than what is shown, but with cultural literacy, the media being shown is deconstructed and form here, hidden motives are revealed and who knows, the way we view the world might be changed, for better or worse.

References:

§         Said, E.W. (1995). Introduction (page 1 – 28). Orientalism (4^th edition). London: Penguin.

§         Schirato, T. and Yell, S. (2000). Communication and Culture (page 1 -4). Communication and Cultural Literacy: An Introduction. Allen & Unwin. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=Js46RoWSYlEC&lpg=PP1&dq=schirato%20yell%20cultural%20literacy&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false

Week Eight- The Voice of a Picture

A photograph, after developing for hundreds of years, has now reached a stage where a person could shake the world with just a simple ‘click’ from its camera. Used as prosthetic memory, evidence and art, a picture from a photographer could served different purposes and create different meanings (Wells, 1997). Why, ‘an image can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range of settings, and mean different things to different people’ (Sturken and Cartwright, 2009, page 9).

As a prosthetic memory, pictures could ‘remember’ things for us and even in more great detail. Though, it is debated that while pictures might recorded everything that human memory could not bother remembering, pictures could not ‘capture’ the emotion or atmosphere of the scene getting photographed on, which is perhaps why Vincent van Gogh had decided to draw a portrait of his mother after feeling dissatisfied seeing a photograph of his mother (Batchen, 2004, page 6).

Modernism favours photographs, taking them as the ‘universal’ or ‘absolute’ truth. Being in an era of growing scientific interests, the photographs are used as tools of documentations and to provide evidence and for some, to record history as it is. However, as photographs could not escaped from being subjective, postmodernism argues that photographs could not be taken as ‘universal truth’ as the author – or in this case, photographer – is ‘dead’ (Lombardo, 2010) and hence could invite several different meanings, according to the interpreters’ knowledge and standing.

Nowadays, photographs are also commonly used for cultural critique (Wright, 1999, page 135). Whatever Vincent van Gogh may say, one could not argue that photograph is useful to tell people of what one wants to say or show as a visual evidence of something is usually proven even more powerful than just a spoken account of the same thing.

For example, this picture below:

First look, it may look like an ordinary landslide. But what if a title is added to the picture saying, “The cemetery after the heavy rainfall”? Most may raise their eyebrows thinking what happens to those resting souls who are unfortunate enough to be caught in the landslide? Are they going to be returned to their rightful place…if one manages to differentiate them from gravels, soils and their bones?

People would then think that if something has been done sooner, this unfortunate event would not happen, especially in a place where tradition runs deep within the core of its society. Hence, this picture could be said as a cultural critique of the lack of care for environment, more ever in this era where almost every place are now concerned with how the Mother Earth is treated and how this would affects people’s lives. If even the resting ground for those who have departed could not escape from the claws of natural disasters, what are the chances of living people could sit in idle without having a risk of getting caught with the global phenomena?

Simple it may be, but the picture above could relate a message so important to the world. And there are hundreds and thousands of pictures out there that have done so, such as Dorothea Lange’s ‘The Migrant Mother’, Malcolm Browne’s ‘Self-Immolation’ and Kevin Cartner’s Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of a Sudanese girl who was crawling towards a feeding centre with a vulture watching her every move from behind .

As a conclusion, photograph may not be able to capture the sensation of the captured scene and may possesses several different meanings, but it would not be ‘silenced’ – it would have its own voice, telling a story that perhaps could change the world’s fate.

References:

§         Batchen, G. (2004). Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (pages 6 – 16). New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Retrieved June 20, 2010 from UBD Ebrary Website.

§         Lombardo, P. (2010). The Three Paradoxes of Roland Barthes. University of Georgiana Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=YChybB41EfMC&lpg=PT154&dq=barthes%20author%20is%20dead%20photography&pg=PT54#v=onepage&q=barthes%20author%20is%20dead%20photography&f=false

§         Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2009). Image, Power and Politics. Practice of Looking: And Introduction to Visual Culture (page 9 – 47). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2^nd Edition.

§         Wells, L. (1997). Thinking About Photography (page 24 – 54). Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

§         Wright, T. (1999). Photography as a Cultural Critique (page 135 – 151). Photography Handbook. London and New York: Routledge. Retireved June 20, 2010, from UBD Ebrary Website.

Week Seven - A Story in Everything

Narrative is basically story-telling (Cambridge Dictionary Online), and according to Aristotle, narrative structures of a beginning, a middle and an ending.

It can be found in many types of media and can be of different forms (Huisman, 2005, page 11). Hence, it would be not such a farfetched idea to suggest that narrative could be found almost anywhere, either in printed form in books and newspapers, spoken form in conversations and radio and songs, graphical form in printed adverts in magazines and flyers and a combination of different forms such as in films and television commercials.

Let’s take a look the most common form of narrative – a fairy tale:

The Peasant in Heaven

Once upon a time, a poor pious peasant died, and arrived before the gate of heaven. At the same time, a very rich, rich lord came there who also wanted to get into heaven. Then Saint Peter came with the key, and opened the door, and let the great man in, but apparently did not see the peasant, and shut the door again. And now the peasant outside heard how the great man was received in heaven with all kinds of rejoicing, and how they were making music, and singing within. At length all became quiet again, and Saint Peter came and opened the gate of heaven, and let the peasant in. The peasant, however, expected that they would make music and sing when he went in also, but all remained quite quiet; he was received with great affection, it is true, and the angels came to meet him, but no one sang. Then the peasant asked Saint Peter how it was that they did not sing for him as they had done when the rich man went in, and said that it seemed to him that there in heaven things were done with just as much partiality as on earth. Then Saint Peter said, “By no means, you are just dear to us as anyone else, and will enjoy every heavenly delight that the rich man enjoys, but poor fellows like you come to heaven every day, but a rich man like this does not come more than once in a hundred years!”

(source: The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

It is easy to see that the above tale have an obvious beginning, a middle, and an ending; hence, fitting into the narrative category. Now, let’s see another form of narrative – a printed advert:

People in general are born story-tellers and thus, it does not take much effort to make a story out of even a simple picture. With reference to the schema theory – a theory of which suggests that ‘people organize everything they know into schemas or knowledge structures’ (Tracey and Morrow, 2006, page 51) called frames. These frames consist of two levels – the top level and the lower level. The top level is basically consists of what is familiar with the analyzer, while the lower level is what could be changed or filled within the same frame.

Returning to the advert, it is of no trouble to guess that this advert is for a slimming product or service. There is obvious beginning and middle in the picture, but, again, it is easy to think that the man used to be fat (beginning). Then, he found this particular slimming product/service and began to use it (middle). Finally, as ‘a happy ending’, he manages to get the optimum body build and satisfaction is clearly shown on his face (ending). The top level here is that the man is now slim, and the lower level would ‘fills’ up his past as ‘a fat man’ and indirectly, making a narrative.

Now, let’s move to yet another form of narrative – a music video:

Again, with reference to schema theory, the narrative begins with a supposed separation of the young couple and with the aid of the lyrics sung by the artists, it could be assumed that the couples are thinking – or being reminded of – the times they used to spend together before and the young man makes an immediate decision to find his girlfriend which result, in the end, they reconcile with each other. Not exactly very farfetched from the usual fairy tales shown by Disney and Hollywood, with the couple having a happy ending.

And apparently, television commercials have always used this ‘fairy tale’ structure in their narrative-like commercials, just like the one below:

Here, the narrative is even more complex. Not just the commercial has the basic structure for a narrative, it also has definite characters – a ‘hero’ or in this case, a ‘heroine’, a ‘villain’, the ‘godmother’…or ‘godfather’ to be precise, the ‘villain’s side-kicks’ and ‘minor characters’. Again, referencing to schema theory, it is hard not to be reminded of those Disney Princesses’ films with the protagonist struggles against the ‘cruelty’ of the antagonist to achieve her dream and like any other fairy tales, she succeeds and even her enemy gives a grudging recognition for it.

There are a lot of other forms of narratives that could be analyzed but I would stop here and as a conclusion, within almost every subject, there would be some kind of narrative structure injected in it, obviously stated or hidden cleverly. And with schema theory, these narratives can be unravelled for the world to see.

References:

§         (1998). The Peasant in Heaven (page 696 – 697). The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. London, England: Routledge.

§         Branston, G. and Stafford, R. (2006). Narratives (page 41 -64). The Media’s Student Book. New York, United States: Routledge.

§         Fulton, H., Huisman, R., Murphet, J. and Dunn A. (2005). Narrative and Media. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=wBfchogKaUQC&lpg=PP1&dq=narrative%20in%20mass%20media&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=narrative%20in%20mass%20media&f=false

§         Tracey, D.H. and Morrow, L.M. (2006). Schema Theory. An Introduction To Theories And Models (page 51 – 54). New York: Guildford Press. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from Universiti Brunei Darussalam Ebrary Books Website.

Week Six - Believe It Or Not, Dragons Are Real

Rhetoric is an art of persuasion and is widely used in the communication world, and this includes the visual world. I would, however, concentrates on the rhetoric used in documentaries.

As cited by Gill Branston and Roy Stafford in their ‘The Media Student’s Book’ (2007), documentary is ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ (page 455). In other words, documentary represents reality and most would agree with this statement. Unlike any other shows, documentary usually deals with facts such as history and science and these are conveyed ‘academically’, in terms of tones, visual outputs and words. Hence, documentary is perhaps one of the trusted medium other than news programmes.

Rhetoric is commonly used in documentaries though it is not as obvious as that use in public speaking and debates. The rhetoric in documentaries is more subtle, and could be traced in the words spoken by the narrator and the visual shown.

Below is some clips from a documentary called ‘Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real’:

Notice how the narrator speaks of the dragons? It is as if dragons are real…in fact, they are real that they have a dragon carcass to prove it, and the unknown-source scars on the fossil head of a tyrannosaurus rex which then are concluded from the talons of a flying dragon. People may say that the carcass is a fake and the fossil head of infamous T-rex is altered. However, the way the documentary is shown from the beginning is like of those in ‘Walking With Dinosaurs’ or ‘Meerkat Manors’. It is so believable that no wonder a lot of viewers are beginning to be convinced that dragons are as real as the dinosaurs, especially those who happen to be fantasy lovers.

When the narrator proceeds to the so-called Jurassic life of the dragons, he begins to talk about the T-rex and the dragons in co-existent and even informs the viewers a bit of information on the dragon’s defence systems, adding more credibility to the theory of the dragons’ existence. It is worth noted that the narrator does not use probability words, such as ‘if’, ‘might’, ‘probably’ or ‘maybe’ when he talks about the dragons; in fact, he talks like all of them are just mere facts.

And by the end of the documentary, it would not be a wonder if most viewers are convinced that dragons are real, except now only leaving fossils as their remnants:

This is how rhetoric is used in documentaries. They do not say what to believe or not, much less forcing someone to change opinion of something. But, they present evidences which are coupled effectively with convincing explanations and this creates a very persuasive ‘argument’ and one of the factors that contributes to the ‘truthfulness’ of documentaries.

Reference:

§  Griffin, E. (2008). A First Look At Communication Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.

§  Branston, G & Stafford, R. (2007). Documentary And Reality TV. The Media Student’s Book (page 455-460). New York, United States of America: Routledge.