When the Algorithm Takes Root AI-Generated Plants and the Crisis of Ecological Realism

The increasing prevalence of social media platforms like WeChat, Douyin, and Weibo raises questions about their impact on the visual literacy of Chinese University students. Understanding how these platforms influence students’ ability to critically analyse visual information is crucial in today’s visually-driven World. Existing research on the interactions between social media and visual literacy is limited, which led to the need for a research focus. This study investigates the relationship between social media platforms and the visual literacy of Chinese university students. Specifically, this study aims to explore how these platforms affect students’ abilities to analyse visual contexts, identifying both the positive influences and challenges they pose. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to synthesise existing empirical research on the interactions between social media and visual literacy. This approach was chosen due to the relatively novel stage of research in this field, where new findings and identification can be expected. The analysis reveals a dual impact of social media on visual literacy. These social media platforms can foster creativity, digital storytelling, and exposure to diverse visual cultures. Besides, these platforms can also contribute to challenges such as visual overload, superficial engagement with content, and the potential spread of misinformation. These challenges can hinder deeper visual analysis and critical thinking. This review also found evidence that social media can promote creative expression but also contribute to cognitive overload and passive content consumption.

Aims: This study investigated the relationship between levels of digital literacy (data literacy, information literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, and meta literacy) and social media netiquette among Senior High School students. Study Design: A descriptive-correlational research design was employed to explore the possible associations among the variables. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at San Isidro College, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon, Philippines, during the academic year 2024–2025. Methodology: A total of 153 Senior High School students from Grades 11 to 12 were selected through stratified random sampling. Data were gathered using a researcher-made questionnaire that measured digital literacy in terms of data literacy, information literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, and meta literacy, as well as the students’ social media netiquette. Descriptive statistics were used to describe student levels, while Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to determine relationships among variables. Results: The results revealed that the students have high levels of digital literacy across the dimensions of data literacy (M = 3.85, SD = 0.87), information literacy (M = 4.03, SD = 0.83), media literacy (M = 4.05, SD = 0.84), visual literacy (M = 3.98, SD = 0.82), and meta literacy (M = 3.98, SD = 0.83), having an overall mean of 3.97 (SD = 0.02). Additionally, students social media netiquette also resulted as high (M = 3.97, SD = 0.83). However, the Correlation analysis revealed no significant relationship between digital literacy and social media netiquette, with data literacy (r = -0.315, p = 0.253), information literacy (r = -0.281, p = 2.273), media literacy (r = -0.175, p = 0.501), visual literacy (r = -0.024, p = 0.927), and meta literacy (r = -0.413, p = 0876) all showing very weak and non-significant correlations. non-significant. Conclusion: The Senior High School students showed high levels of digital literacy and social media netiquette. However, these variables did not significantly correlate with each other. This implies that improvements in digital literacy do not necessarily lead to better adherence to social media netiquette among students, suggesting that there is no mutual influence between these two variables. Further research could expand the sample size or investigate other factors influencing digital literacy and social media netiquette, providing a more comprehensive understanding of how students carry themselves in this digital era. Additionally, this study offers a unique contribution by demonstrating understanding that teaching digital literacy alone may not be sufficient to cultivate appropriate social media conduct among the students, as high levels of digital literacy result does not equate to responsible social media use. While many studies concentrate on technical skills and information retrieval this research underscore the importance of ethical and respectful communication in digital environment. Moreover, this opens avenues for further research on to the factors that influence social media behavior among digitally literate students it raises question about what additional skills or knowledge might be necessary to ensure that students not only know how to use technology but also understand the implication of their online actions. These findings underscore the need for educators and policymakers to consider factors beyond digital literacy, such as emotional intelligence or personal values, when designing programs to improve online conduct.

In the past two decades, screen-based technology like smartphone devices has become ubiquitous within global society. These devices primarily function with visual displays and have allowed visual media to flourish. Visual literacy, the ability to critically consume visual material, is thus an essential competency to teach students for them to be able to navigate the increasingly visual world. The current and upcoming generations of students who grew up surrounded by technology like personal computers and smartphones are what some researchers call “digital natives.” They use visual forms of communication (emoticons, emojis, stickers, GIFs, and memes) to communicate online (in social media and messaging apps) instead of solely traditional word-based forms. However, being constantly bombarded by visuals growing up does not automatically equal visual literacy and, by extension, media literacy. Academic studies on university students’ visual literacy found that students lacked competencies in visual literacy and were not as visually literate as was assumed. When presented with images, the university students in the study lacked skills in critical analysis of visual components, including contextual details, possible manipulations, and what is being implicitly communicated. Therefore, competencies in visual literacy, media literacy, and other related literacies are of the utmost importance in teaching students. This essay will focus on the potential of a specific, emerging type of visual that I argue can be utilized for teaching visual literacy: the Internet meme.

Visual literacy is crucially important in a contemporary society dominated by visual media, yet visual literacy teaching and education has not (yet) achieved sufficient recognition in terms of tertiary education curricula. One criticism against the use of social media technologies is the perceived inability of participants to distinguish between virtual and real worlds. This is the result of an education system that has not given adequate prominence to the development of critical visual literacy, but assumes that students will 'pick up' the necessary competencies along the way. The answer is not to try and resist the new paradigm of a mediated society where the virtual has increasingly taken the place of face-to-face human interaction, but to explore visual technologies in order to design subject-specific taxonomies of learning and appropriate methodologies for the teaching of visual semiotics. In this study poster elicitation was used to analyse data on visual literacy. The data were obtained from narratives written by 89 respondents after studying two posters about visual messaging. The data revealed that visual images do not constitute a universally understandable means of communication that function independently of language.

Fake news images are deliberate, publicly published news intended to mislead viewers. Public distrust in news extends to visual images in the news, especially as digital images are so easy to fake and manipulate. To deal with this issue, people need to be visually literate in order to discern the veracity of visual news messages. Moreover, fake news images are more likely to minimize or negatively portray minority groups who might threaten the existing social order, although these marginalized people are less likely to produce news. Tracing the information cycle of fake news reveals steps where images can be faked in order to influence and impact consumers. Visual literacy can use the framework of a news media information cycle to empower people, especially marginalized populations, to become impactful civically engaged visual literacy consumers and producers.Keywords: Visual literacy; fake news; images; photojournalism; civic engagement; bias; social media; powerPart of the Special Issue Visual literacies and visual technologies for teaching, learning and inclusion <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.bf2afe2e>

Designed to introduce visual literacy to instructional librarians, this book shows librarians how to make visual literacy relevant and engaging by framing it as a digital skill. Millions of images are uploaded to social media every day, and students are increasingly being asked to participate in such image-rich research projects as websites and blogs. Image manipulation and photo editing are commonplace, but the visual literacy skills needed to detect that kind of misinformation aren’t. Students need help learning how to find, evaluate, and use images in an ethical and effective manner. Digital Visual Literacy is designed to introduce visual literacy to instructional librarians. This concise introduction teaches visual literacy as a digital skill, complete with digital humanities-based workshops and assignments to make instruction informative and engaging. It covers all aspects of visual literacy, from copyright to image evaluation. Each chapter clearly explains visual literacy standards and proficiencies and offers practical instructional assignments, in-class demonstrations, and more through the use of digital humanities tools. • Helps clarify visual literacy, explains its importance, and teaches how to get students thinking about it • Demonstrates how to integrate digital humanities tools into instruction more effectively • Features demonstrations and assignments that can be used in any class by a wide variety of librarians

Communicative Capitalism and Neo-Feudalism: An Interview with Jodi Dean

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to utilise social media news platforms for disseminating critical public health information and safety protocols. Visual aids, including photographs, videos, charts, and infographics, played a key role in conveying health-related messages. However, there are variations in visual communication practices across countries, influenced by local health communication habits and cultural contexts. This study examines these variations in the visual health discourse that emerged in China and Germany during the pandemic, focusing on metaphorical mapping as a central analytical tool. We introduce the concept of “visual dataset fingerprints,” outlining the distinct composition of public health visuals on eight social news media platforms in Germany and China. Our descriptive analysis encompasses over 3700 digital visual media posts related to COVID-19, shared by leading national news media accounts in German, English, and Mandarin on microblogs in 2022. As a preliminary outcome of our study, we observe differences in image use based on the analysis of 1678 media posts by four Chinese outlets and 1329 media posts by four German outlets. These differences may reflect variations in how public opinion, perceptions, and attitudes toward COVID-19 policies are shaped across languages and cultures. Through its comparative visual analysis, our pilot study offers the potential for a new research approach to global healthcare communication in social news media and digital visual cultures.

In what follows, my central concern is with the contemporary critique of ideology; but my trajectory involves thinking the operation of ideology in socialmedia. By social media, I mean Web-based networksites that, as boyd and Ellison explain, allow people to “(1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.”1 The examples of such sites are familiar by now to many and include blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. My objective is to think critically about the ideological role of social media in the context of late capitalist consumer society—a society defined by what Slavoj Žižek refers to as the “demise of symbolic efficiency,” what Fredric Jameson has defined as “postmodern,” or what Mark Fisher has more recently referred to as “capitalist realism.”2 Referring as well to Jodi Dean’s pioneering work on a Žižekian approach to online media, particularly her conception of “communicative capitalism,” my aim is to argue that social media provides a good model for thinking about the connection between ideology and enjoyment at a point when digital media makes possible the conditions for the erosion of the subject of desire. In contrast to Dean, though, my claim is that the ideological operation of social media is one that interpellates the subject in relation to desire rather than drive.

PERHAPS WE CAN BLAME IT ON MY BEING SNOWED IN, but I recently discovered YouTube(TM) and began to contemplate its potential impact on nursing education. There is a lot of controversy surrounding trash on YouTube, but this is a social phenomenon that cannot be ignored by educators. As you will see here and in future columns, my intention is to focus on Web 2.0 tools and how we can begin to use them to transform nursing education. I will build off five themes (Web 2.0 as a social networking medium, digital natives, Net generation, visual literacy, and thinking outside the box) and develop the notion of Nursing Education 2.0 - that is, emerging technologies that will transform the way nursing education is offered. HERE IS HOW MY INTEREST IN YOUTUBE GOT STARTED. I received an email asking me if I had seen the video titled "Introducing the Book" (aka "The Medieval Help Desk") at www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek. Produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel for a show titled "Oystein & Meg" (Oystein & I), this 2001 video, in Norwegian with English subtitles, is marvelously funny. It is about a new technology called the book. An end user, who is puzzled and skeptical about using the book as a replacement for the scroll, calls on a technical support person to show him how to open and close a book and turn the pages. As the support person reassures the user that the text will not be lost, I was LOL (laughing out loud). WATCHING THIS VIDEO, I started to think about how it might be used in my course "Human Computer Interaction Design." I also began to reflect on digital natives and their preferences for multimedia learning, how faculty can adopt technologies and new ways of teaching, and how we can prepare a generation of nurses to use electronic health records and clinical decision support tools in their practice. What Is YouTube? According to its website, "YouTube is a place for people to engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing videos." It "started as a personal video sharing service, and has grown into an entertainment destination with people watching more than 70 million videos on the site daily." According to the website, YouTube "is building a community that is highly motivated to watch and share videos" through a web experience (www.youtube.com/t/about). YouTube is part of the social phenomenon of Internet usergenerated content and one of the "You" tools described in Time's Person of the Year article (1). It is what Newsweek describes as "putting the WE in the Web" (2). The Educause Learning Initiative refers to YouTube as a social application that "allows users to post and tag videos, watch those posted by others, post comments in threaded discussion format, search for content by keyword or category and create and participate in topical groups" (3). YouTube in Higher Education Why would the notion of watching user-created videos be important for higher education? First, remember that the students now entering the hallowed halls of higher education are digital natives who grew up in a multimedia world and are most comfortable with technology. If you want to engage students of the Net generation, you will want to explore this tool as an adjunct to your classroom or online teaching environments. For example, what will you do if tech-savvy learners submit video projects that they have created instead of traditional papers? This is not a far-fetched idea. If you follow the Pew Internet & American Life Project, you will see numerous reports about how teenagers, adults, and seniors use the Internet. According to a study on teen content creators and consumers, "57% of online teens create content for the Internet. That amounts to half of all teens ages 12-17, or about 12 million youth. These Content Creators report having done one or more of the following activities: create a blog; create or work on a personal webpage; create or work on a webpage for school, a friend, or an organization; share original content such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos online; or remix content found online into a new creation" (4). …

Visual literacy is taking on new importance in the media saturated culture in which we all live. Everyone is inundated with visual stimulation each day and with the amount of time spent on the computer, and with social media, that stimulation is not likely to decline. The result is a need to be able to critically evaluate visual information in the same way that we have been taught to critically read written text. This is the field of visual literacy, and while it has existed for some time, it has become the focal point of many twenty-first century skills frameworks. It is no longer optional to be able to understand visual information. This chapter explains what visual literacy means, and how cultural differences impact the interpretation of visual information.

The spread of hoax on health issue is a compelling phenomenon in digital era. By focusing on visual literacy as a way to avoid hoax, this qualitative research attempts to find how visual hoax operated. The main concept of Visual Literacy proposed by Maria Avgerinou, reading the spectrum of an image by Roland Barthes and six dimension of photograph life by Widiatmojo are used to analysis visual hoax. The result shows that visual hoax on corona virus occurred as the time frame dimension were diminished, the meaning was changed as well as the narration of the original image, the topic was compromised, the lost of image quality and the distribution on social media by anonymous identity. Therefore, people need to have basic competence in visual literacy, which is the ability to understand visual language accompanied by the ability to think and analyze. It will make an individual produce a positive perception that should be use to avoid hoaxes.

Although students and adults alike are constantly exposed to visuals both online and offline, merely being exposed to visuals does not guarantee visual literacy (Kedra &amp; Zakeviciute, 2019). This study explored K12 teachers’ perceptions regarding their personal and instructional use of online images as well as the influence of a visual literacy unit of study on their Internet usage and instructional practice. Findings indicated teachers primarily share online images including memes and personal photographs with close friends and family through social media outside of school. However, the visual literacy unit of study helped them to become more skeptical of online images, more aware of strategies to evaluate online images, and further analyze the composition of images. While teachers stated they typically integrate visuals into lessons as a form of representation, the visual literacy unit of study influenced them to incorporate images more intentionally, implement different digital tools, give students more flexibility in their learning, and widened their definition of literacy. Recommendations include aspects related to providing teacher education opportunities incorporating critical lenses, content area pedagogy, and explicit image evaluation strategies.

Visual language and culture are co-constitutive and constantly evolving. This transformation is more pronounced in the contemporary visual literacy landscape especially with widely used social media and more democratic technologies, such as smartphone cameras, which are used for myriad purposes and in diverse ways. These uses and purposes vary by culture and demographics but little is understood about how smartphone cameras shape contemporary Western ways of seeing: visual culture and literacy. Specifically, this study seeks to explore and identify how people living in Australia use their smartphone cameras to document their everyday lives. It also explores how these devices influence the participants’ visual languages and literacies. To analyse these changes, this study adopts a two-method approach. First, 30 participants were recruited from three different age groups. These participants donated a consistent two weeks of the images on their camera rolls for analysis. These images were then subjected to an 11-variable analysis. Second, 23 participants followed through with an interview to contextualise their photographic behaviour and identify the aspects they perceive shape their ways of seeing. These two methods allow an understanding of who or what is photographed as well as how and why these participants made images in certain ways.

Due to the recent widespread adoption of technologies such as the internet, social media, and digital image capture and creation, the average person today needs to decode and process information from many different formats and media to fully participate in the contemporary world (Tertiary Education Commission, 2008; Hanifan, 2008). This study aimed to address this need by exploring how the visuals one encounters every day can be leveraged as opportunities for learning visual literacy. The aim operates on the presupposition that a person is surrounded by visuals in their everyday environment which they could potentially analyse to deepen their knowledge. However, learning from visuals in one’s environment is often beyond the capabilities of novice learners, due to a lack of learning support in this informal learning setting. Therefore, this study propositioned a learning model of visual skills based on mobile learning (m-learning) and rhizomatic learning.&#x0D; M-learning allows learners to learn in multiple contexts, across time and space, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices so that learning can be available everywhere and every time (Crompton, 2013; Georgiev, Georgieva, &amp; Smrikarov, 2004). This leads to learning that can be more situated in a learner’s surroundings (Gikas &amp; Grant, 2013), which is an attractive proposition when considering how learners can learn from life’s everyday imagery when they are separated from traditional learning support. &#x0D; In rhizomatic learning, the curriculum is not predefined by experts or teachers, instead, “community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions” (Cormier, 2008, p. 5). In this way, rhizomatic learning communities can provide crowd-sourced peer support as ubiquitous as imagery is.&#x0D; The learning model proposed in this presentation was arrived at by utilising a practice-based research approach. The learning model was implemented and tested as prototype for an app. Usability testing and interviews were used to qualitatively evaluate the prototype, as well as the underlying learning model. The outcomes of the study demonstrate that visual literacy can be achieved by novice learners from contingent learning encounters in informal learning environments through collaboration and by providing context-aware learning support. The presentation will focus on the outcome of the study, which is the learning model and its pedagogical assumptions.&#x0D;