Visual Rhetoric Research Articles

Стратегии визуальной риторики в сфере журналистики данных (на примере инфографики «РИА Новости» о COVID-19)

Data journalism of RIA News has a unique appeal at the level of visual rhetoric. Using the example of the RIA News infographic about COVID-19, this article examines the strategies of visual rhetoric in responding to public health events and analyzes the significance of visual rhetoric of the infographic from RIA News in public crisis communication. The study showed that RIA Novosti uses various tools, such as the rhetoric of time, spatial rhetoric and interactive rhetoric, to select, analyze, process and visualize data, forming a new system of expressive meanings, which allows data journalism to provide the public with objective and realistic information about crisis.

Visual rhetoric in the digital discourse of Peruvian trade unions on Facebook

La fragmentación de las organizaciones sindicales ha motivado la búsqueda de estrategias alternativas de comunicación sindical en las redes sociales, donde el discurso icónico adquiere mayor relevancia que la capacidad lingüística de los medios de comunicación tradicionales para movilizar políticamente a los trabajadores. En este contexto, la presente investigación tiene como objetivo analizar los usos de la retórica visual en el discurso digital de las organizaciones sindicales a través del material gráfico utilizado para la red social Facebook, con el fin de establecer una comunicación efectiva con la opinión pública y los miembros de la organización. Para alcanzar este objetivo, se adoptó un enfoque cualitativo que se centra en la interpretación de los usos retóricos visuales identificadas a través del análisis semiótico de 323 imágenes, que incluyen 113 logotipos y 210 piezas gráficas de los sindicatos que responden a diversas actividades específicas de la plataforma Facebook. Como resultado, se identificaron cuatro núcleos semánticos del discurso sindical: (i) emancipación, (ii) representatividad, (iii) compañerismo y (iv) consenso. A través de cuatro modos de la relación icónica-plástica se descubrió que las retóricas más utilizadas eran las de emancipación y representatividad, mientras que se postulaba como tendencia emergente el uso de las retóricas de compañerismo y, en menor medida, las de consenso. Esta investigación aporta a los estudios sobre las organizaciones sindicales desde una mirada semiótica.

Imaginaries of Dying: The Visual Rhetoric of Stock Images Tagged with "Palliative Care".

In digital culture and its global economy, images circulate transnationally and shape cultural ideas about social and existential issues. While there is growing interest in death online, few studies have investigated the role of visual material in different forms of communication in this field. In this article, we examine the depiction of dying and death in stock photographs tagged with "palliative care" drawing on an image corpus of 618 photographs. Stock photographs are images produced for commercial purposes that are stored in databases by agencies on the Internet. To analyze how these representations depict fictional palliative care settings, we used visual grounded theory. The findings show that typical caregivers are portrayed as emphatic individuals, while patients appear as composed human beings facing death without fear. We argue that the images represent aspects of the modern hospice philosophy and the cultural narrative of healthy aging.

Visual Rhetoric and Its Arguments in Caricature: The Speech of Saudi Women in Manal Al-Rasini's Drawings as an Example

This study is concerned with a rhetorical approach to the visual discourse, and it shows its argumentative dimensions through a theoretical glossary that deals with the concept of visual rhetoric, its significance, the sections of the visible sign, its functions, and levels of analysis, then standing on the discourse of Saudi women in drawing (caricature) through two topics: The first is strengthening the position of Saudi women in society, and the other is women and families of violence. The study led to the richness of non-linguistic sign systems, their understanding of the eloquence of the phrase, and the mechanisms of arguments and their connecting links. It recommended the need to open up to other visual arts towards formation (comics), conceptual photography, and to study their rhetorical techniques and their argumentative foundations that guide awareness and action.

The Fusion of Ancient and Contemporary: A Visual Rhetoric Analysis of the Visual Representation of Shaanxi in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the National Games

In recent years, the improvement of city image has become an important topic of concern, at the same time, the hosting of mega-events has become an indispensable part of building city image. Therefore, the impact of mega-events on city image has attracted widespread attention in the academic community. However, the current analysis of the impact of mega-events on city image improvement from the perspective of visual rhetoric has not received much attention. Thus, against this background, this study focuses on the visual turn of shaping city image in the Internet era, using the opening and closing ceremonies of the Xi'an National Games as an example. The author has coded the Shaanxi elements in the opening and closing ceremonies of the National Games and created a chart using the visual grammar framework. The study shows that Shaanxi elements can be classified into four types: signs, buildings, natural landscape and distinctive cultures. Based on the interactive meaning in visual grammar analysis, the author analyzes the presentation, function, and meaning of Shaanxi elements from two aspects: the "social distance" represented by lens language and the "attitude" represented by viewing angle. These Shaanxi elements ultimately built an image of Shaanxi with strong economic and cultural strength, distinctive characteristics, inheritance, and innovation. The image of Shaanxi spread by the National Games has become a vivid memory of a generation, and the construction of the image has also become a manifestation of the enhancement of Shaanxi's international communication ability.

From the Archives: Equity of Expression, Disability, and Ecoliteracy in the Limited Editions of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome

Abstract This article examines the limited editions of Ethan Frome and their significance in situating the novel’s role in the American literary tradition. The aesthetically elaborate editions along with the editorial, epistolary, and extratextual discussions they accrued document the relationship among the cultural forces of production that shape the readers’ perception of a masterpiece. At the heart of this archival study is the discussion of explicit strategies that the author, editors, illustrators, and readers used to explain, justify, and endorse the multiple reintroductions of Ethan Frome. Equally important in this article is the assessment of the outcomes that the various iterations of the novel produced both in building the author’s reputation and in amplifying the text’s enduring value, aesthetic versatility, and thematic elasticity. This is also a study of the unique and multiple ways in which the visual rhetoric of the limited editions underscores and amplifies the ecocritical and disability studies-oriented perspectives embedded into Wharton’s narrative.

Public Health, Visual Rhetoric, and Latin America: Steinbeck's The Forgotten Village.

This essay analyzes the visualization of Euro-American medicine and indigenous healing in John Steinbeck's 1941 documentary-drama The Forgotten Village. The movie juxtaposes film and medical discourse as exemplifications of modern, visual culture by showing excerpts from hygiene films and foregrounding medical imagery (e.g., bacteria cultures). The film displaces indigenous medicine by privileging a Euro-American medical model, and the gaze of oppression is perpetuated through humanitarian medical intervention. In short, disease is not simply a material fact but embedded in discourses about community identity, moral values, and politics.

An uncanny architrope: impossible ghosts of empire at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

ABSTRACT This article offers the “architrope” as a means for apprehending rhetorical figures on a symbolic landscape (or “tropography”). I argue that ethical critique of public memory places requires more than reading visual representations and envisioning resistive viewer agencies. Inspired by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s declaration that it should not be possible to remember Victorian England’s women writers without recalling the “worlding” functions of colonial literature in British imperialism, I examine how the Brontë Parsonage Museum should unworld and otherworld its memoryscape. Adding spatial dimension to visual rhetoric, I map tropographic turns where visitors should not only unsettle histories but also confront aporias of postcolonial, feminist, and queer memories. Although rhetorical scholars celebrate the radical potential of the uncanny and the subjunctive mood, my analysis shows that uncanniness can be commodified, and colonizing narratives necessitate overt negation. Remapping commonplaces of museums and memorials therefore requires replacing rhetorical theory’s acquiescence to possibility with emplaced attunement to impossible demands of the forgotten and unrepresentable dead.

The Visual Rhetoric of The Image in The Treatment of Press News Sites for Environmental Initiatives

The Visual Rhetoric of The Image in The Treatment of Press News Sites for Environmental Initiatives

A CORPUS BASED STUDY OF RHETORICAL DEVICES EMPLOYED IN PAKISTANI PRINT MEDIA

Advertisements in all the forms whether print, Electronic or Social media is an important part of our contemporary modern life. We encounter many advertisements frequently in a single day. The fact is that the general public is too much influenced by the verbal and visual part of Advertisements. The employment of Rhetoric is a significant study which can assist the advertiser in drawing appealing features called Rhetoric. The study of Rhetoric is important as it brings forth the implicit techniques which make the form and content of Print advertisements appealing. To address the Rhetoric aspect of print advertisements a Corpus based approach has been employed to analyze the rhetorical devices used by the Advertisers in Pakistani print media including Newspapers, Magazines, journals and bill boards .The advertisements have been selected with timeline of Jan, 2019 to April, 2020.The advertisements have been selected randomly to highlight the rhetoric strategies employed in Pakistani context at both levels: Visual and Rhetoric level .The Text-interpretive analysis is used to analyze the Pakistani advertisements at both Visual and verbal level .The mixed method approach has been employed as this study is based on both qualitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative approach is applied when the advertisements are analyzed according to the McQuire and Mick framework. Qualitative approach is employed when the parsons’ chi square is calculated by taking opinion of the people regarding rhetoric devices merely. The purpose of the study is to find out those rhetoric devices which are employed at both the visual and verbal level by employing the theory of visual rhetoric as a theory to point out the persuasive techniques of Ethos, Pathos, logos and on the verbal level by studying the schemes and tropes at three different levels. The results of the research show that people exhibited a positive attitude which provoked the people to be inclined towards advertisements which employed schematic devices rather than those which employed Tropic devices .The findings suggest the use of schematic and tropic device in advertisements at both visual and verbal level to convey the message effectively and in a persuasive manner.

“We are only to Appear to be Fighting Corruption…We can’t even Bite”: online memetic anti-corruption discourse in the Ghanaian media

Abstract Purpose The goal of this study is to explore how memes are used as tools to expose and shame corruption in Ghana. The Ghanaian media has used memes to criticize unhealthy governmental and social practices and advocated for alternative approaches to addressing these issues. Thus, we explore the qualities memes possess in contributing to the anti-corruption discourse in Ghana. Methods Using visual rhetoric and metaphorical analysis of five media memes purposively collected from the Facebook page of Tilapia Da Cartoonist of TV3, this study discusses the approaches memes employ to ridicule and humorize the fight against corruption in Ghana and suggests remediations for governmental corruption. Results We find that memes play crucial anti-corruption roles. As such, they criticize corruption by showing the impact of corruption on the average citizen. Memes reveal the suppression of anti-corruption agents and agencies and the lack of real commitment to the fight against corruption in Ghana. While memes expose and criticize corruption, they also provide utilitarian approaches to addressing corruption. Central to this study, the research finds that humor is a basic feature of memes. However, within the Ghanaian media context, the humor in a meme does not affect the seriousness of the message a meme conveys. Practical implications Memes can be used strategically as an advocacy tool and a good complement to daily news reports. Social implications Media memes could be used as active media tools to produce, reproduce, distribute, and enhance complex socio-political narratives in society. This may have social and political implications for society. Originality This is the first study to explore memes as an anti-corruption media text. It is also the first study to examine the impact of humor on the message a meme conveys. This is done through a qualitative interpretation of the memes. Limitations and recommendations are provided.

The effect of charity website design on perceived consistency and its consequences

PurposeDrawing upon the consistency literature, the theory of visual rhetoric and social judgment of warmth and competence, this study examines the determinants and impacts of perceived interface design consistency in the context of charity websites.Design/methodology/approachTo identify design factors of perceived interface design consistency, this study separates charity website interface design into two aspects: main appeal design (i.e. appeal quality) and peripheral design (i.e. image type). The authors designed a two (appeal quality: low vs high) × three (image type: control vs adults vs children) controlled lab experiment to investigate the effects of various interface choices. A total of 217 subjects participated in the experiment. The authors used structural equation model (SEM) analysis and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to test the research hypotheses.FindingsThis study found that appeal quality and human images increase perceived interface design consistency. The authors also found that the relationship between appeal quality and perceived interface design consistency is moderated by image type. Finally, the authors showed that perceived interface design consistency increases perceived warmth and competence of charity websites, which in turn affect intention to use the website for donations.Originality/valueThe authors’ findings provide novel insights for theory on consistency and interface design and practical implications for charity website designers by identifying determinants and consequences of perceived interface design consistency.

Sharing and redefining power with Vice President Harris: the visual framing by the Biden White House

This study investigates the visual framing of the Biden Presidency based on a content analysis of images released by the White House for its first 100 days in office on Flickr, an online photo-sharing site. The rhetorical ideas of Kenneth Burke and the communication theories of agenda-setting and frame-building provide the conceptual foundations for the study. The Biden administration frames Vice President Harris as a coequal to the President and an active participant in White House spaces and political processes. Harris is charged with ritualistic symbolic power that inserts her and other marginalised minority groups into the collective memory of the United States society and moves its national story to integrate a more diverse community. At the same time, the individual personality of President Biden is minimised in favour of institutional power. These narratives offer a stark contrast to former President Trump’s visual rhetoric and serve to negate news frames critical of Harris’ performance as Vice President.

Professionalism, privilege and publicity: representations of development cooperation in amateur photography and Finnish newspapers, 1968–1972

This article explores the visual rhetoric of development cooperation in Finnish newspapers during late 1960s and early 1970s. Photography, with the political and geographical imagination that it reinforces or dissolves, has the power to shape our perceptions of place, culture and people. The study compares two data sets, one collection of official press photography and another collection of amateur photographs shot by an individual development cooperation worker. It asks, how were development experts represented in the official press photos approved by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Finland (MFA) and, more importantly, how it differed from the set of photographs taken by an amateur photographer, Lasse Björkman, who worked in Tanzania from 1970 to 1972. The results show that the press photos excluded any signs of leisure, tourism or anything associated with exoticism, to centre on experts and expertise, professional diligence and places or actions of work. The public image of individual development cooperation workers was carefully built on the premises of political neutrality, anti-imperialism and rationality. Political appearances are, thus, not only negotiated in offices and conferences but also in choices of representation and publicity.

Becoming (Un)Masked: Semiotics of Identification in Nick Cave’s Hy-Dyve

Displayed in a Kansas City neighborhood with a history of blockbusting, Nick Cave’s 14-channel video installation Hy-Dyve confronted viewers with a visceral sense of entrapment in traumatizing spaces of racism. The immersive environment portrayed deeply moving experiences of confinement and concealment, connecting narratives of the Middle Passage to present fears of racial profiling. Shown at different scales on the dilapidated walls of a deconsecrated church, the video images enabled visitors to sense what it feels like to be exposed to a scrutinizing and categorizing gaze. Building on Gilles Deleuze’s theory of close-up operations, I explore how Cave both showcases and subverts the visual rhetoric of surveillance, inviting viewers to suspend processes of individuation and embrace alterity. I offer a semiotic analysis of the visual motifs in Hy-Dyve and show how their unstable meanings heighten the potential for immersion in conjunction with the projection mapping technique. The entanglement of video images with crumbling architectural features destabilizes perception and fosters reflection on the imbrication of past and present realities of racial discrimination. Placing Hy-Dyve in the broader context of Cave’s body of work, I suggest that it conjoins two different sides of his practice: a post-black approach to issues of identity which is consonant with his Soundsuits and a more radical activist stance which addresses the particularities of black experience and the burdening history of racial abuse.

Plastic Orientalism: Surface Logic and Cultural Technique in K-Pop

This article proposes the notion of “plastic Orientalism” as an emergent cultural phenomenon in recent K-pop music through a textual analysis of BTS’s 2018 music video “Idol.” The music video features a yellow pavilion structure vaguely resembling the Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, but with a two-dimensional flat appearance and a derealized space imposed with computer-generated special effects. By taking a signifier conventionally coded as Oriental(ist) in dominant visual representation and returning such an image ironically with extra saturation, the yellow pavilion is characteristic of plastic Orientalism as a reflective and reflexive cultural technique that radically performs the logic of the surface. “Idol” reclaims the overdetermined associations of “the East” with inscrutability and excess by aligning itself with the architectural facade, offering a conception of subjectivity as routed through objecthood. I argue that plasticity as a visual rhetoric and reparative reading practice allows a renegotiation of the politics of hegemony and resistance for an ethnic-racial identity that disrupts and modulates among the discourses of Orientalism, techno-Orientalism, and ethnonationalism.

Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work

Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work

Corona-Jihad Memes: The Shifting Iconology of Islamophobia from Hindu Nationalists

Abstract This article analyses the visual rhetoric of anti-Muslim imagery in the memetic internet cultures generated by Indian users, as well as the transnational iconology of terror that the Muslim male body is made to embody. The core problem the article addresses is located at the intersection of three crucial contemporary challenges: the global pandemic, rising global anti-Muslim ideology, and the role of socially mediated popular political imagery. Here, I look at corona-jihad memes – a subset of anti-Muslim popular imagery made viral through social media. These images illustrated the fake news spread globally, connecting Indian Muslims with the pandemic. Here, I show the strategies of representation used by Hindu nationalist users to create an iconology – or a mode of recognition – for the Muslim male as the threatening and dehumanised other, through a process of mimicry, counter-influence, translation, and flow in a rich intermedial world of transnational imagery.

Perpetuating Perceptions: Understanding the “Chaining” of a Common Training Narrative Beyond the Classroom

Workplace learning initiatives are influenced by perceptions, and negative perceptions hinder organizational innovation and productivity. This exploratory study presents an argument that messages shared among trainees regarding their training experiences shape such perceptions. The application of Symbolic Convergence Theory reveals two discursive narratives explaining trainees’ perceptions that are foundational for a desired rhetorical vision of training efforts. The findings reveal practical implications for teaching applied communication and instruction in the workplace training classroom. Further, exploring “backstage” workplace communication such as gossip, opinions, and perceptions sheds light on the intersection of communication, human resource development, and vision construction.

See That in a Small Town: Visual Rhetoric, Race, and Legal History in Tennessee

See That in a Small Town: Visual Rhetoric, Race, and Legal History in Tennessee