Images such as photographs, drawings, animations and videos are everywhere in modern society and are playing an ever-increasing role in court. This general shift from written and spoken language to ‘visual language’ in society has been of interest to language and communication researchers for years. Within the domain of law, however, a lot of the language and communication literature is traditionally focused on written and spoken language. In the first part of this paper we provide a theoretical background in which we discuss how people understand images, what visual literacy means, how images can have persuasive power and can influence people in terms of their emotions, attitudes and decision-making and we talk about how this can play a role in court. Furthermore, we illustrate some gaps in the literature. In the second part of the paper we show, based on a small-scale ethnographic study and systematic observation, how often visualisations are part of the case file in Dutch hearings, what types of images are talked about and/or shown and by whom they are introduced during the hearing. We conclude by discussing what communication scholars find interesting about these observations and we also suggest a number of research opportunities that may be of interest for interdisciplinary research amongst law and communication scholars.

中文翻译：

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在荷兰重罪法庭中使用可视化的传播视角

照片，图画，动画和视频等图像在现代社会中无处不在，并且在法院中的作用日益增加。多年来，语言和交流研究人员一直对这种从书面和口头语言向“视觉语言”的普遍转变感兴趣。但是，在法律领域内，许多语言和传播文学传统上都集中于书面和口头语言。在本文的第一部分中，我们提供了理论背景，其中讨论了人们如何理解图像，视觉素养意味着什么，图像如何具有说服力并可以在情感，态度和决策方面影响人们，关于如何在法庭上发挥作用。此外，我们说明了文献中的一些空白。在论文的第二部分，我们展示了 根据小规模的人种学研究和系统的观察，可视化在荷兰听证会中作为案件档案一部分的频率有多少，讨论和/或展示了哪些类型的图像，以及在听证会中由谁介绍。最后，我们讨论传播学者对这些发现感兴趣的地方，并提出一些法律和传播学者可能感兴趣的跨学科研究机会。