Religion, globalization and commodification in online world news slideshows: the dis/connection of images and texts

Abstract

Lately, possibilities of producing and spreading news pictures have increased explosively through online media. Concurrently, religion has become increasingly salient in politics and news. Both processes are connected to globalization. This study encompasses globalization, religion and online images and aims to convey how online world news slideshows represent religion, and more particularly how linguistic and visual parts of picture paragraphs are interrelated, as well as related to representations of different religions. Methodologically multimodal analysis and discourse analysis are combined, focusing on composition of images and (dis-)connection of images and texts. Theories on globalization and possibilities and particularities of online news (pictures) and slideshows, frame the analysis. Tendencies to templates for different religions are found. Many religions appear as aesthetic commodities in images, whereas Islam in texts “sells” images of violence/destruction. Image–text relations are thus crucial both in the creation of meaning and of commodities in online news image culture. Two main image–text types are identified: “Religion in text, (potential) violence/destruction/despair in picture” (Islam) and “Spirituality/worshipping/aestheticism” (other religions). The world news slideshows have crucial roles as containers for these polarized image–text types, where they are related to and defined by each other in the genre's (cl)aim to cover the whole world.