Readers’ and Photojournalists’ Perceptions of Print Media Road Carnage Images in The Herald

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis 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.