ABSTRACT This study investigates possible semiotic and linguistic effects of road carnage visual images in print media, as perceived and conceptualised, respectively, by readers and photojournalists of The Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe in the context of the government’s public campaign on the prevention of the high incidence of fatal road accidents. It proposes that images have transcended the monotony of texts and could now tell the same story, sometimes, much better. The study, therefore, sought to: establish the onset of visual news as a social semiotic meaning-making process in the print media; establish ethical and cultural considerations in reading print media visual images; examine the use of framing in creating news through visual images; and, analyse the combined impact of visuals and text captions in news reading. Using visual image content analysis (n=43); a questionnaire for regular readers of the newspaper (n=100) and photojournalists’ interviews (n=5), the study concludes that visual media images, specifically road carnage images from The Herald, are a form of “language” that is fast becoming a new mode of effective communication in emotion-inducing news. Similar to Austin’s theory on speech acts, the reading of road carnage visuals should be treated as a visual act.

中文翻译：

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读者和摄影记者对《先驱报》中印刷媒体道路大屠杀图像的看法

摘要 本研究调查了津巴布韦《先驱报》的读者和摄影记者在政府预防高发病率的公共运动的背景下，分别感知和概念化了印刷媒体中道路屠杀视觉图像可能的符号学和语言学影响。致命的道路交通事故。它提出图像已经超越了单调的文本，现在可以讲述相同的故事，有时甚至更好。因此，该研究试图： 将视觉新闻的出现确立为印刷媒体中的社会符号意义制造过程；在阅读印刷媒体视觉图像时建立道德和文化考虑；检查框架在通过视觉图像创作新闻中的使用；并分析视觉和文本标题在新闻阅读中的综合影响。使用视觉图像内容分析（n=43）；该研究针对报纸的普通读者 (n=100) 和摄影记者的采访 (n=5) 进行问卷调查，得出的结论是，视觉媒体图像，特别是《先驱报》的道路大屠杀图像，是一种正在迅速成为“语言”的形式。情感新闻中有效沟通的新模式。与奥斯汀关于言语行为的理论类似，对道路大屠杀视觉效果的阅读应该被视为一种视觉行为。