Apple's “Get a Mac” video campaign offers another example of how content can be differentiated by its form (Figure 1.3). Actors and humorists John Hodgman and Justin Long posed as human interpretations of a PC and a Mac. Against a white background, Long, dressed in casual clothes, introduced himself, “Hello, I'm a Mac.” Hodgman, dressed in a more formal suit and tie, adds, “And I'm a PC.” Even before the characters act out attributes of each brand (a laid‐back Mac and an uptight PC), we can deduce these attributes from their form: two men standing in a blank void, staring directly at us, but one with rigid posture and business attire, and the other posed and dressed casually, hands in jeans' pockets.
Figure 1.3
Source: YouTube.
DECODING VISUAL MESSAGES
LO3 Identify ways to analyze visuals and conduct visual communication research.
As you can see from this discussion, images we consume and create don't have fixed meanings. Instead, people go through a process of coding and decoding messages and images that they send and receive (Hall, 1997). For instance, when we see a forwarded meme, we “decode” the meaning of the image and text. How we decode will have to do with our individual experiences, our skills in interpreting messages, our values and beliefs, and the cultures and subcultures we are part of. In addition, the source of the message or visual affects how much interest and credibility we assign to a phenomenon.
Semiotics: Signs and Symbols
A useful way to understand and analyze communication involves semiotics, the science of signs, an approach we will cover in detail in Chapter 4. Semiotics begins with two important concepts: the denotative and connotative meanings of signs. Think of denotation as the dictionary definition or a description. For instance, the denotative description of the American flag might be “13 equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white; there is a blue rectangle in the upper hoist‐side corner bearing 50 small, white, five‐pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars (top and bottom) alternating with rows of five stars” (Central Intelligence Agency n.d.).
However, connotative meaning has to do with the associations, emotions, and cultural expectations of individuals that are evoked by a symbol. It would seem that burning a piece of white, blue, and red cloth shouldn't be controversial. But for many Americans, the act of burning the flag is an act of treason. For others, it's a symbol of free speech and First Amendment rights. For those with negative views of the United States, it is a symbol of oppression deserving of desecration. Semiotics is a way to understand signs and their interpretation in a more systematic way.
Consider how advertisers communicate with audiences and the denotative and connotative aspects of ads. The image in Figure 1.4 was part of an advertorial (also called a native advertisement) for Toyota Tacoma trucks. Most people effortlessly interpret that this is an image of a truck and know that the advertiser wants viewers to consider purchasing it. Advertisers expect their target audience not only to see the literal or denotative aspects of the image (this is a big, shiny, new truck), but also to assign connotative meanings, presumably positive ones.
In this advertisement, the outdoor setting is rugged and framed by a beautiful cloudless sky. The connotation the advertiser likely intended may be a sense of manliness, power, and virility. For other viewers, the ad may suggest freedom, a statement of success, or the opportunity for adventure. And for others who assign oppositional meanings, it may be a symbol of irresponsibility, squandering the earth's resources, and contributing to climate change. Beyond the feelings that the advertiser hopes audiences will decode, the ad, like all ads, tells us something about our culture once we metaphorically look under the hood of the ad. What could this tell us about our culture and values?
Figure 1.4 This image communicates that it is possible and desirable to own such a machine. It tells us that this product, if purchased, will fill important functional and psychological needs. The ad suggests that buying this truck will make the purchasers happy and provide them with freedom and independence.
Source: Zach Joing/Alamy Stock Photo.
Visual Rhetoric
The photograph in Figure 1.5 became an Internet sensation. Taken at the premiere of the film, Black Mass, almost everyone pictured clutches a smart phone and is excitedly trying to find an angle in order to take a photo of a celebrity. Only one individual stands out – an older woman who is serenely observing the event – without a camera.
Why did the image resonate with so many? Tweets and shares often commented that the woman was the only individual living in the moment and truly having a genuine, unmediated experience. And of course, the image resonated because it was unusual – the woman's behavior was unexpected and outside the bounds of today's culture. This can be explained through understanding the cognitive perception of selectivity – our brains draw conclusions from stimuli that are significant within a complicated visual experience. Whether the woman was, indeed, living in the present or she didn't own or use a smartphone is unanswered. Nevertheless, by showing something outside the norm, the image communicated aspects of culture to many people.
In the following “What's Ahead” section, you will see a preview of the book's chapters and the many methods of visual analysis that you will learn – including semiotics, visual rhetoric, narrative analysis (how visual compositions tell stories), metaphor analysis (how visual images propose comparisons), and fantasy theme analysis (how visual messages converge in groups to develop cohesive understanding).
Figure 1.5
Source: John Blanding/The Boston Globe/Getty Images.
FOCUS: Saving Big Bird
“I'm sorry, Jim. I'm gonna stop the subsidy to PBS … I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I'm not gonna keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.” With those words in the first presidential debate of 2012, moderated by Jim Lehrer of Public Broadcasting System (PBS), candidate Mitt Romney made Big Bird the star of the debate and launched a tidal wave of social media messages. Most of those messages were highly visual. A @firebigbird Twitter account popped up almost immediately and social and traditional media exploded with memes, jokes, parodies, and videos.
In a frequently shared image, a child holds a sign while standing in front of an American flag. The sign, written in childlike printing, reads “My American dream is to save Big Bird's job so kids can learn.”
A close reading of the image leads the viewer to several interpretations. First, it draws attention to PBS and its programming aimed at educating diverse young people and dependent, in part, on the financial support of the US government. Second, the image alludes to Romney's proposed funding cut. And through the image of the child (of indeterminate ethnicity and sex) against a background of the US flag, it suggests that all of America's children are threatened by the potential loss of PBS programming and their “American