(2021). Death, Grief, and New Beginnings. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 2-2.

Based on historical research, visual analysis, photographic documentation, and 31 interviews, this article examines Madonna yard shrines constructed by Italian Americans in the 20th century as vernacular media and considers their role in knowledge production, identity representation, and the transmission of history. It discusses the historic meanings and contexts of these shrines, including their emergence

Recent critiques contend that “Far too much current writing on photography—even in pieces about social media and photography—fixate on professional photographers,” so this piece seeks to buck that trend by focusing on ordinary smartphone owners and how they use their mobile devices to capture or create, stylize, and represent their worlds. More specifically, this study examines the “life cycle” of

Academic debate exists regarding the actual power that images possess to create journalistic impact—or outcomes of reporting. While there is a growing body of research on journalistic impact, it is an underexplored research area, and there are no known studies specifically bringing together journalistic impact research with photojournalism literature on the power of imagery. Through surveys, this research

This article critically analyzes a pair of photographs from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017: Samuel Corum’s nighttime image of torch-bearing protesters on the University of Virginia campus and Ryan Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning daytime image of counterprotesters falling through the air as James A. Fields Jr. rammed his car into them, killing Heather Heyer. Using

(2021). Interwoven: A Resting Place for Collective Grief. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 58-66.

(2021). To See and Be Seen: The Environment, Interactions and Identities Behind News Images. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 67-68.

(2020). Introduction to the Special Issue: Visual Representation and Marginality. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 27, Visual Representation and Marginality, pp. 182-182.

To satisfy the desire of wealthy tourists for “exotic” locales and “unspoiled” scenery, some Australian and New Zealand organizations engage in exploiting Indigenous cultural capital and heritage. This article examines promotional video material from national tourism campaigns available on YouTube, including the Australian campaign Where the Bloody Hell Are You?, and Qantas and Air New Zealand safety

By examining the images that Undocuqueer activists circulate in online spaces, this study explores how activists rely on visual expression to reveal and reframe the complex forces that shape Undocuqueer life in the United States. Undocuqueer visual communications expose (1) the in-betweenness that defines the Undocuqueer experience, (2) the expanding transnational intersectional coalitions at the foundation

In recent years, police agencies have adopted Indigenous cultural designs on police vehicles and uniforms. In 2017, the Western Australia Police unveiled police vehicles branded with Indigenous cultural designs as part of an initiative that aimed to strengthen relationships with the Aboriginal community. This article analyzed one of these vehicles using semiotic analysis. Our analysis shows how the

(2020). Revealing the Black Female Aesthetic Through Protest Photojournalism. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 27, Visual Representation and Marginality, pp. 222-230.

(2020). Call for Papers: Special Issue on the Visual Aspects of Political Campaigns and Politicians. Visual Communication Quarterly: Vol. 27, Visual Representation and Marginality, pp. 231-231.

“Scars of Racism” seeks to document the lasting physical reminders of racism on the American landscape. The legacy of racism exists throughout our society—in culture, language, and economics. With ...

This text is an approachable explanation to an overview of multimodal analysis, bridging information from traditional models based first only in text to evaluation of visuals and their meaning pote...

My training and experience in journalism and photojournalism has led me to street photography. Particularly when I’m on vacation in other countries, I love to photograph people at work. Italy has m...

Ali Azmat is one of the prominent painters in Pakistan and currently working as a lecturer at the Punjab University College of Art and Design. Early in his career, the canvases of Ali Azmat represe...

The purpose of this series with the title “Nuqta: An Emblem of Divinity” was to unveil the mystical connotations underlying a visual Nuqta (dot) in the genre of contemporary calligraphic art. Nuqta...

The series “Brush‐Knitted Metaphors” is based on converting the golden memories of childhood in the form of contemporary miniature paintings. Life is highly influenced by the strong grip of the sub...

We now live in an interdisciplinary research world. The silos that once existed in visual communication, visual anthropology, and photography are now becoming much more congenial to cross‐disciplin...

I entitled this work A Discourse with Nature. To narrate the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of these landscape paintings, I have taken the following lines of the famous poem A Light Exists in ...

The facial features of animation characters convey information about the characters to audiences and make the characters more believable. Using multidimensional scaling, this study analyzed the differences in the facial features of 332 three-dimensional characters from the top-100 grossing animation films at the international box office. We also explored whether top character designers follow implicit

This study quantifies the effectiveness of information recall with direct and indirect labeling of the annotation layer in a news data visualization. Variations of three data visualizations from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal were presented to participants in a crowdsourced experiment to measure their story comprehension. Our results demonstrate that direct labeling

This study examined web-based U.S. media coverage of Brittany Maynard’s 2014 decision to exercise Oregon’s right-to-die law. Using framing and information-processing theories such as dual coding, and visual and multimodal processing, the authors identified textual and visual elements of multimedia stories that conveyed cultural frames that shaped Maynard’s story. Findings were consistent with recent

Based in Argentina, La Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de Argentina (Ammar), an organization that advocates for sex workers’ protection of labor rights, launched a Banksy-style graffiti campaign to promote legal protection and to raise awareness of sex workers’ alternative role as mothers. Through the application of McGee’s ideographic criticism, I analyze Ammar’s graffiti’s verbal and visual ideographs

A content analysis was conducted based on the presidential images presented by the leading newspapers and the official presidential office websites in the United States and Korea. Findings reveal differences between the two countries in terms of look, type, viewpoint, and visual hierarchy of the photographs. Specifically, the proportion of casual-look, documentary-style pictures showing the rear/back

Driving west on Missouri Route J, a twin-lane road in Cooper County in the state's core, one eventually finds Bunceton, a city of 353 souls about 160 miles away from the 3 million living in St. Lou...

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

Among the pictorial representations that have succeeded in electronic-mediated communication (EMC), the rise of emoji is of special interest, as they have widely spread around the world. This article reports on the results of a survey conducted among students and staff of a large Spanish university (63% women) on the use of emoticons and emoji and their interpretation. Results confirm the preference

Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (“Brexit”) in June 2016 has been one of the biggest issues in British politics and has received wide media coverage because of its consequences for both the UK and the European Union. This article explores the visual representation of Brexit in political cartooning through the analysis of a corpus of digital cartoons. The analysis yields two findings: (1)

While there is some literature analyzing moving images and their effects relating to Black Lives Matter, there hasn't been an extensive analysis of the still images associated with this movement. This article analyzes one of the most widely circulated and remarked upon photographs from the Black Lives Matter movement in comparison to several other images associated with the movement so as to illuminate

This article examines photographer H. H. Bennett's contributions within the context of the history of photography. Bennett is a fascinating historical character because he used his own inventions to explore different areas of the discipline under the umbrella of commercial photography, and he contributed to what would become media photography with his stop-action techniques. Recognizing Bennett's work

This eye-tracking study compared the usability of Yelp's Augmented Reality application Monocle with its familiar map-based app. Thirty participants (15 in each group) had to find a location in an outdoor mall using one version of the mobile Yelp app while wearing a pair of eye-tracking glasses that recorded the general area of the natural environment or smartphone their eyes focused on. Results showed

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

Documentary photography as visual research creates a deeper understanding of an individual's identity by capturing decisive moments that highlight distinctive characteristics that make people unique. Individuals do not always communicate all parts of their identity, such as their religion, class, family status, and profession, but with a camera those aspects of identity can be captured. This visual

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

During the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, elite political cartoonists on both the left and right expressed dismay and disgust at both Obama's “messianic” rhetoric and journalists' obsequious coverage through editorial cartoons. Cartoonists' images, as this textual analysis will show, coalesced around common themes in their critiques of media coverage and journalists themselves depicting

An experiment (N = 455) was conducted to examine the persuasive effects of two stylistic elements: gain-loss framing and emotionally evocative imagery. The theoretical model specified that perceived message valence is a direct result of the two elements and that valence subsequently influences emotional and cognitive responses and ultimately behavioral intention. With two positive, attractive message

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

Dabiq and Rumiyah are two professional online magazines that the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) established between June 2014 and September 2017 to support its broadcasting media. This study examines the visual discourse strategies used in Dabiq and Rumiyah and the association between the discourse types and the visual resources in the two magazines. The study finds that Dabiq and Rumiyah communicate

This article examines the emergence of the visual documentary genre through the study of Jacob A. Riis's magic lantern spectacles, writings, photographs, audience reception, and critical reviews as published in the press during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To demonstrate an existing strong connection between Riis's lectures and documentary film, in particular, the article also focuses on

Commenters have expressed concern over media content related to military veterans, saying journalists fail to provide the public with an accurate understanding of what it means to be a veteran. Nevertheless, few studies have examined the representation of veterans in news media content. The present study analyzed 740 photographs shared by regional news outlets on the popular social media platform Twitter

This analysis used Peirce's triadic approach to interpret 58 public depictions of women during the two world wars. The images, appearing in government posters or as ads and illustrations in U.S. magazines and newspapers, endeavored to convey the seriousness of the war effort and mobilize audiences to support it. Aligned in five thematic clusters (competence, domesticity, heterosexual attraction, beauty

Some 1,000 surveys were conducted on Amazon's MTurk, asking respondents to rate a high- and low-quality visual design, in this case a billboard ad. While most respondents preferred the high-quality ad, over a third opted for the low-quality design. Respondents who showed a preference for the low-quality design liked it for its “static” qualities, in that it was common, typical, average, and standard

Today's rapidly changing media industry poses an ongoing challenge for American institutions of higher education, which are often responsible for educating and preparing the next generation of skilled professionals. This case study examined how a service-learning design guided by the dual system of vocational education and training could help address journalism students' workplace readiness and increase

With social media, presidential figures can communicate directly with citizens without filter, and the self-selecting nature of social media ensures that supporters will comprise the majority of that figure's social media following. This project examines an example of visual content aimed at a president's supporters: the Real News Update. Produced by the Trump reelection campaign, the Real News Update

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

Despite the growing significance of emotional images in advertising, the psychological and physiological responses toward multiple opposite valence images presented simultaneously remains somewhat unexplored. This eye-tracking research examined the relationship between emotional response, visual attention, and recall. The results showed that individuals were more likely to gaze toward the positive

With the growing interest in Big Data, researchers are calling for a reframing of key questions about what constitutes knowledge found in very large data settings (Boyd & Crawford, 2012). Many researchers are developing new ways to access and organize Big Data, and many academic institutions are offering new courses that focus on analyzing Big Data. Many Big Data course syllabi require statistics and

This study tells the story of Edmundo Camana, a Peruvian peasant, whose image was used by Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2003 to visually represent the political violence that occurred between 1980 and 2000. It explores the role of iconic images in the transition to a democratic regime, particularly in the context of a national truth commission. This example illustrates the issues that

A majority of Americans distrust the news media due to concerns over comprehensiveness, accuracy, and fairness. Since many interactions between journalists and their subjects last only minutes and can be published within seconds, if not live, research is needed to explore how journalists' understandings of their subjects' narratives evolve over time and how much time is necessary to avoid surface-level

This article explores the visual representation of the deaths of African Americans Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou as presented on 150 front pages of America's newspapers. Considered by many as icons for their athletic, entertainment, and/or cultural contributions, Ali and Angelou were both represented in photographs, designs, and written content, which were analyzed in this study using visual semiotics

TIME Magazine's online 10-year commemoration of 9/11 “Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience” utilizes narratives of spectacular resilience, which this essay defines as a visual stylization with four features: an economy of suffering based on media attention, loss figured in terms of a catastrophic event, a depoliticized national model for confronting loss, and superlative heroic action. I contrast the

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.

This research explores how sharing photos on social networking sites contributes to an individual's identity expression. A mixed-methods survey was conducted with Instagram users to understand how they frame, annotate, and share their lives with others through digital photography. Results from a serial multiple mediator model reveal that the frequency with which individuals post on Instagram predicts

A primary port in the slave trade, the city of Savannah, Georgia, has but one public monument to slavery. As a text, therefore, Savannah's cityscape lacks a chapter on enslavement. The lone slavery monument's placement, content, and poetic inscription are the products of what was a bitter, decade-long fight over what to include and exclude, an editing process that activated competing interpretations

This article explores how documentary film practice and visual storytelling can be used to help portray Qatari women's narratives, even though many are prohibited by cultural norms from appearing in visual media. We investigate which communication and media practices can provide a work-around, ensuring that women's stories and testimonies are documented. We also explore whether Qatar's social and cultural

Within hours of its publication online, the “pepper-spraying cop” image from the Occupy Wall Street movement at the University of California–Davis became an Internet meme. The outraged public manipulated key signifiers of the famous picture, creating hundreds of digital derivatives that offered new takes on what happened. With the use of iconographic tracking and visual rhetorical analysis, the study

Natalia Mielczarek shows how memes have rhetorical value and can affect people in the real world through a case study of the pepperspraying cop meme (Lt. Pike at UC Davis) in “The ‘Pepper Spraying Cop’ Icon and Its Internet Memes: Social Justice and Public Shaming Through Rhetorical Transformation in Digital Culture.” Mielczarek investigates how memes are “more than frivolous visual jokes or mere social

Political communication has changed drastically in recent years, and in the 2016 election cycle, the messaging app Snapchat entered the arena. Snapchat is a virtually based messaging service that allows users to send and receive time-sensitive, visual messages called “snaps.” This study offers a visual analysis of news delivered via Snapchat, revealing three main themes: hard news sensationalized,