Stock Photo Research Articles

"Don't think of a soda": Contradictory public health messaging from a content analysis of Twitter posts about sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in California from 2015 to 2018.

To show how sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes were framed in posts on Twitter (now known as X) through text and images, we conducted a content analysis on a sample of Tweets from California users posted between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2018 about SSB taxes in Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, and/or Albany, California. We evaluated posts for information sources, arguments for or against SSB tax policies, and images used. We found that posts presented a mix of messages through text and images. The majority of posts (64%) included arguments supporting SSB taxes, 28% presented a neutral position (e.g., factual information) or a mix of both pro-and anti-tax arguments, and 8% opposed. One-third of posts included an image, almost half of which appeared to be stock photos from SSB advertisements: many of these were shared by medical and public health users. Some tax supporters also reposted messages and images from opposition campaigns and added their own criticisms. By reposting opponents' anti-tax messages and images of SSBs, tax supporters may have inadvertently promoted SSBs, reinforced opposition to SSB taxes, and normalized SSBs. While advocates effectively shared pro-tax arguments, they should also ensure that accompanying images reflect the solutions they seek, not just the problem they are trying to combat.

Heritage and hate in Iceland: speculations about white supremacy, Viking imagery, museums, and care in a changing world

ABSTRACT In late 2020, a photo of a policewoman appeared on an established Icelandic news website. The police officer in question is depicted casually reaching for something in the boot of her police vehicle and used as a stock photo for a regular newspaper featuring some of the incidents the police have recently attended. Three patches were exposed on the officer's security vest. Those depicted the Icelandic flag, the Icelandic flag with the Thin Blue Line symbol, and the Vinland flag with an added picture of the Punisher symbol. The resentment could have revolved around her use of the Icelandic flag, a clear violation of the legislation. Nevertheless, the outrage that ensued was instead directed at the remaining symbols, long connected with police brutality and negative views within police forces towards minority groups, particularly people of African American descent. The image that caught public attention was the Vinland Flag, which closely resembles the Icelandic and Norwegian flags. It engages with Nordic heritage as Vinland is the name Norse (Viking) explorers gave North America when they settled there early in the second millennium. The Goth metal band Vinland designed the flag in the 1990s. Inevitably, it has different meanings for different groups of people. Still, its most notable appropriation is by right-wing populist groups such as white supremacists, who have claimed it as a symbol of their core ideals of white power and white supremacy.

Sustainable Tech: Exploring Consumer Valuation and Investment in Refurbished Smartphones

Electronic waste poses negative effects toward the environment and human health. With a goal to reduce e-waste, this research promotes SDG 12: “Responsible Consumption and Production” by encouraging the use of sustainable electronics. This paper examines the factors impacting consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for refurbished smartphones in the UK by analysing secondary data on eBay using ordinary least squares (OLS). It was found that WTP was higher in three situations: 1) when actual photos were used instead of stock photos, 2) when a longer warranty period was offered, and 3) when no descriptions were provided versus when negative descriptions were used. Further, consumers regard aesthetics as more important than functionality. These findings show that there is promising potential in the market for refurbished electronics, and ultimately, in promoting sustainability.

True or False? Viewer Perceptions of Emotional Staff and Stock Photos in the News

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of multi-used stock photography in the news contradicts the photojournalism professional values of truthful and emotional depictions. This reality echoes other false images increasingly appearing in the media, including deepfakes and artificial intelligence. In the present study, a two (stock and staff photo) by two (positive and negative valence) quasi-experiment is conducted. The dependent variables include: 1) credibility; 2) self-reported arousal level; 3) emotional valence perceptions; 4) fixation duration; and 5) fixation count. Participants viewed staff photos as more credible in both positive and negative valences. Negative photos were perceived as slightly less credible. Stock and staff photos were similarly arousing, received similar valence perceptions, and had similar gaze fixations and durations. Overall, participants perceived the genuine emotion portrayed truthfully in photojournalism as opposed to the faux emotion acted out in stock photos.

Application Of Deep Learning For Image Deepfake Detector Using Convolutional Neural Network Algorithm

Social media has long been used by the public in general as a means of exchanging information. Behind this commonly exchange of information, hide the malicious intent of those who are not responsible for spreading false information or hoaxes. This false information, which can come in various forms such as images, sounds, or videos, can actually be useful when used as stock photos or simply used as caricatures and satire. Unfortunately, false information often used on famous people instead to make them look like they said or did something that never happened. This certainly needs to be controlled, one of which is by using deepfake detector that aims to recognize false information pattern. Deepfake detector utilizes the computer's ability to self-learn to recognize that invisible patterns in images using one of deep learning algorithms, namely Convolutional Neural Network, which converts images into a collection of arrays containing numbers and then performs mathematical operations repeatedly on each layer. The result of the mathematical operation can then be used as a reference to determine whether an image is real or hoax. Author’s deepfake detector application using Convolutional Neural Network, specifically using the Resnet-50 model on hoax images created using AI with the ProGAN model, appears to be able to detect hoax images with the same model, with an accuracy of 85%, precision of 100%, and recall of 65%, but appears to experience decrease in accuracy when used in deepfakes with other models such as StyleGAN and BigGAN.

Generative AI Images and Indian Media Industry: An Overview of Opportunities and Challenges

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained initial momentum in the past few years. Another side of this is Generative AI, which is growing and has the capacity to transform journalism and media content. There are speculations about the consequences of AI from creating warfare to the making of movies. This article considers notable platforms like Shutterstock, providers of stock photographs, music and editing tools and secondly, DALL.E 2-Open AI, a generative AI platform of Chat GPT.The proposed research article aims to find out the effects of generative AI images in the media industry, the opportunities of AI generative visuals and the challenges faced by the industry due to the innovative technology. This article will also try to demonstrate the capacity and the limitations of generative AI content and reflect on the implications of generative AI for media education and journalism.

Choosing the Right Visual for Social Media: Comparing the Engagement of Stock Photos Versus Natural Photos

Social media is an important piece of Extension outreach efforts. Across many different platforms, photos or graphics accompanying social media posts have repeatedly yielded greater results, in terms of engagement and success. Thus, it is imperative to include a visual element with each post, and a social media post without one would be considered a missed opportunity. This article explores the question of whether stock images are as effective as natural images. Facebook posts from the Center for Rural Enterprise Engagement (CREE) team were analyzed to determine differences in engagement rates for stock images and natural images taken by the CREE team. Results indicate natural photos had significantly higher engagement rates than stock photos. Thus, it is recommended that content creators strive to create and use their own photos for posts. However, because the difference between mean engagement rates for stock and natural photos was low, in times of need, a stock photo can produce better engagement than no photo at all.

Leveraging behavioral science and artificial intelligence to support mental health in the workplace: a pilot study.

Many American employers seek to alleviate employee mental health symptoms through resources like employee assistance programs (EAPs), yet these programs are often underutilized. This pilot study explores the design of a behavioral science-based email campaign targeting engagement with stress management and mental health resources via an EAP, among employees of a large home builder in the Southeastern US. Behavioral designers created a behavioral science intervention using a multi-step design approach and evidence based behavioral strategies. For this pilot intervention, employees received either a treatment message [i.e., behavioral science message assembled and delivered via the behavioral reinforcement learning (BRL) agent] or a control message (i.e., a single generic, supportive message with a stock photo) with a call to action to utilize their EAP. A total of 773 employees received emails over the course of 1 year. Engagement was high, with an 80% email open rate. Over 170 employees (22%, 159 treatment and 14 control) clicked the CTA and logged into the EAP site at least once. This pilot study suggests that using behavioral science and artificial intelligence can improve employee usage of EAP, specifically with the intention of exploring mental health and stress management resources, compared to benchmark rates of 5% per year.

Representations of Obesity and COVID-19 in Leading Stock Photography Websites

Emerging research on the news representation of obesity and Covid-19 has found that obese individuals are overwhelmingly presented in stigmatizing ways in news article texts, but the visual representation of obesity and Covid-19 has been understudied, even in the increasingly ubiquitous news stock photographs. This study analyzed the representation of obesity and Covid-19 in 111 editorial stock photographs from Adobe Stock, Getty Images, and Shutterstock using visual content analysis and semantic field analysis. In contrast to past research, which has found well over 65% of the analyzed photographs to be stigmatizing, only slightly over half of the analyzed editorial stock photographs were stigmatizing. Potentially destigmatizing associations of obesity with attractive appearance and positive emotions were also present.

Teaching with images: opportunities and pitfalls for Holocaust education

ABSTRACT Based on a sample of the most commonly used textbooks and online teaching resources, we find that photos play a central but deeply problematic role in Holocaust education in the UK. The impact of photos on a generation of ‘primarily visual learners’ is significant. But an over-reliance on a set of problematic stock photos, inadequate or erroneous captioning, and a lack of prompts for a critical analysis of photos create problems. Their combined effect can adversely affect understandings of this difficult history, and limit the development of visual literacy skills required for tackling contemporary misinformation and visual indoctrination.

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.

Monuments to Midwestern Pioneer Mothers and Native Women

Monuments to Midwestern Pioneer Mothers and Native Women Cynthia C. Prescott (bio) Local sculptor John K. Daniels's 1936 monument for Minneapolis, Minnesota's new Pioneer Park bore striking similarities in style and meaning to other early midwestern pioneer monuments. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. John K. Daniels, Pioneers Monument, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as of March 2013. Photo by author. [End Page 21] Figurative sculptures honored Euro-American settler men's hard work hewing farms out of the wilderness, accompanied by a self-sacrificing "pioneer mother" symbolizing the arrival of White Christian culture on the frontier. A bas relief on the reverse of the monument nodded to French settlement of the region by depicting Native American men—but no women—welcoming French explorers to their homelands. While dozens of monuments erected across the United States by women's clubs in the early twentieth century emphasized women's roles carrying White "civilization" westward, Daniels's placing of his pioneer mother figure in a supporting role was typical of many midwestern monuments. Most midwestern statues glorified White men for conquering the wilderness that Native men yielded, portrayed White settler women as supporting players to their men, and erased Native women's presence from the region altogether. This essay will argue that in contrast to better-known monuments in the Far West, which largely featured "cowboys and Indians" memories of the Old West or solo pioneer mothers embodying Euro-American civilization, most midwestern monuments erected between the 1890s and 1930s emphasized the process of U.S. westward expansion or White homemaking.1 Midwestern pioneer monuments, which outnumbered those in the Far West, celebrated the family values long associated in popular memory with America's supposed rural heartland. Monuments erected in the Midwest early in the twentieth century—like Minneapolis's 1936 Pioneers Monument—tended to emphasize White settler men's hard work establishing new farms and communities. Midwestern pioneer mothers typically appeared as self-sacrificing supporting characters—again like the female figure in Minneapolis's Pioneers—emphasizing pioneer men's good intentions. Contemporaneous monuments erected in former Spanish and Mexican territories (including California, Arizona, and Texas) grappled in various ways with the persistence of Indigenous and Spanish-speaking populations. A few in the Midwest portrayed Native men yielding to White male explorers or settlers prior to the arrival of White women, or hinted at European immigrant influences, but most ignored non-Anglo-American residents. Native women appeared only rarely as symbols of Indigenous acquiescence to White manhood. Recent decades have seen a resurgence in interest in public statuary throughout the United States. Midwestern communities are once again erecting monuments to the region's nineteenth-century residents. But instead of passive, self-sacrificing White mothers standing by their men, [End Page 22] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 2. Dale Lamphere, Dignity of Earth and Sky, Chamberlain, South Dakota, as of October 2021. "Woman standing near tall Dignity statue on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River off Interstate 90 near Chamberlain, South Dakota." Photo by Glenn Nagel/Alamy Stock Photo. twenty-first-century pioneer monuments portray more active and vibrant female characters. Moreover, some Midwesterners are vocally challenging the racial implications of earlier imagery. Calls for more inclusive monuments have begun to bear fruit. In 2016, Chamberlain, South Dakota, erected Dignity of Earth & Sky, a sculpture of a solo Native American woman. Far from yielding or disappearing in [End Page 23] the face of White settlement, the Native woman stands proudly, actively displaying a star quilt representing Lakota and Dakota culture that adapted and responded to Euro-American influences. While not as imposing as Chamberlain's fifty-foot-tall Dignity, other midwestern communities have also begun to honor both Native and White women as community leaders. Early midwestern pioneer monuments erased the region's Indigenous, Métis, and other non-Anglo populations to an even greater extent than did those installed in the Far West. Most midwestern frontier-themed monuments depict middle-class White family values made possible by masculine persistence and maternal sacrifice. But, like western pioneer monuments, midwestern monuments have grown more diverse and inclusive in recent decades. Monuments to European immigrant groups portray their subjects as...

Exploring the Intersection of Intellectual Property Rights and the Stock Photography Industry: Global and Indian Perspective

This study aimed at exploring intellectual property rights (IPR) on the stock photography industry in the world, with a specific focus on India. The study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the current state of the stock photography market and the challenges faced by photographers and artists in this industry in terms of IPR protection and enforcement. The research is based on secondary data, including articles, reports, and other relevant literature, and it provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the stock photography industry in India and globally. The findings suggest that the stock photography industry is growing rapidly, with increased demand for high-quality images and videos. However, the industry is also facing significant challenges. The study also indicates that in countries like India, photographers and artists have the potential to earn income through selling stock photos, videography, and other artistic work over IPR-based stock photography platforms.

I'm Your Boy: Dan Fogelberg and Peoria, Illinois

I'm Your BoyDan Fogelberg and Peoria, Illinois Ray E. Boomhower (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Dan Fogelberg in concert, May 1984. Photo by MediaPunch Inc./Alamy Stock Photo On a snowy Christmas Eve, 1975, the Fogelberg family of Peoria, Illinois, celebrated by enjoying some Irish coffees. Unfortunately, they were missing an important ingredient—whipping cream. The Fogelberg's youngest son, Dan, a musician who had released his second solo album (Souvenirs) the year before on Epic Records, and was visiting for the holidays, headed out to fill the order. With most stores closed, he ended up at the Convenient [End Page 231] Food Mart, located at the top of Abington Street hill. Browsing the aisles, Fogelberg came across someone he knew—Jill Anderson, his onetime girlfriend during their school days at Woodruff High School, class of 1969. A schoolteacher in Chicago, Anderson had come to the store in search of another holiday staple: eggnog. The two decided to catch up on each other's lives, sharing a six–pack of beer (Olympia) in Anderson's car before parting ("We drank a toast to innocence/We drank a toast to now/We tried to reach beyond the emptiness, but neither one knew how"). As he started to go to rejoin his family, Fogelberg, filled with memories of the pain of their breakup long ago, noticed that the snow had turned to rain.1 Five years later, the chance encounter in the city on the Illinois River had been turned by Fogelberg into a song, "Same Old Lang Syne," released as a single in November 1980 and later included on his seventh album, The Innocent Age, a double LP released in 1981. As he noted in a 1997 interview, he did not usually write fictional songs, preferring to express his own experiences and philosophy, trying to write stories with his music. "If you do it well and honestly, it will connect with other people," Fogelberg said. "Same Old Lang Syne" peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and since its release has become a regular part of the holiday season, played along with other traditional Christmas songs. Although Fogelberg believed the song was important, he had written it "as somewhat of a joke, you know, the first four verses of that were just funny. It really happened, obviously, but I wrote it as a joke one afternoon." Fogelberg sought to stretch himself as a songwriter, seeing if he could do a song "about nothing, about something so inconsequential." As he continued to work on the song, however, its tenderness struck him deeply. "And it started taking on a life of its own," Fogelberg admitted. Powered at its end by a Michael Brecker saxophone solo to the tune of the Scottish folk song "Auld Lang Syne," a New Year's Eve staple, Fogelberg's tune has engendered both heartfelt emotion and derision from listeners. For examples, while fellow singer/songwriter Jackson Browne said he hated to admit it, but the song made him cry, as it "encapsulated the passing of time and the revisiting of former hopes and dreams," a Chicago newspaperman lambasted the song as "the worst thing to ever come out of Peoria."2 Whatever one's opinion about "Same Old Lang Syne," it showcased the close ties between Fogelberg, who died at the age of fifty-six from prostate cancer, and his hometown, a quintessential midwestern community known best, perhaps, for the ubiquitous question about the viability of everything [End Page 232] from plays to consumer products, "Will it play in Peoria?" It was in Peoria where Fogelberg began his rise to musical stardom in a career that began in the early 1970s and lasted until the 2000s, spawning several platinum (a million copies sold) and multiplatinum records, as well as such memorable hit songs as "Part of the Plan," "The Power of Gold," "Longer," "Heart Hotels," "Run for the Roses," and "Leader of the Band." Peoria has remembered its native son, honoring his memory and that of his family by renaming the street near the convenience store he made famous with "Same Old Lang Syne" Fogelberg Parkway in 2008...

We Made It in Venice! But Then …? Reversing Notions of Center and Periphery

We Made It in Venice! But Then …? Reversing Notions of Center and Periphery

The Cost of Diversity: An Analysis of Representation and Cost Barriers in Stock Photo Libraries for Health Education Materials, 2021.

Ineffective health communication can drive health disparities and limit the effectiveness of interventions to reduce them. Stock photo libraries are a critical tool for developers of patient education, health education, and intervention materials. It is not clear how well stock photo libraries represent communities bearing disproportionate burdens of disease. We conducted a search using five popular stock image libraries (Adobe Stock Images, Canva, Getty Images, Microsoft Office Image Library, and Pixabay) in November 2021 to evaluate diversity and representation in health-related stock photos. We searched for the following five key preventive health topics: healthy eating, exercising, quitting smoking, vaccination, and pregnancy. The images (N = 495) were coded for age, gender presentation, representation of perceived minoritized racial/ethnic identity, skin color using the Massey-Martin skin color scale, markers of high socioeconomic status (SES), and access costs. Results. The representation of perceived minoritized people, darker skin color, and inclusion of markers of high SES varied greatly by the search term and library. Images predominately portrayed young adults and adults, with limited representation of other age groups. Images in libraries with any paywall were significantly more likely to depict a person of perceived minoritized racial/ethnic identity and depict darker skin colors, and were significantly less likely to contain markers of high SES identity than images in libraries that were free to use. We found that it costs more to develop culturally relevant health education materials for minoritized populations and groups that do not represent high SES populations. This may hinder the development of effective communication interventions.

The Rest Is History

The Rest Is History

Desocializing Social Media: The Visual and Media Ideologies of Stock Photography

Commercial image banks powerfully shape the cultural meanings of social media, especially when circulated as “fact” in the news media. To this end, we report a social semiotic analysis that documents the representational, compositional, and interpersonal framing of social media in a corpus of 600 stock photographs top-sliced from three global image banks. This core analysis is complemented with reference to (a) keywords used to categorize photos in image banks, and (b) two indicative samples of photos reproduced in international English-language news reports. We find that a visual “regime of truth” is produced in stock photography (and then circulated by the news media) that is gendered, affectively flattened, and “corporatized.” Social media are also depicted in ways that are disembedded and largely asocial or desocialized. We interpret these findings in terms of visual and media ideologies, and vis-à-vis scholarly perspectives on “connectivity” and “sociality” in digital communication/culture.

Improved Evaluation and Generation Of Grid Layouts Using Distance Preservation Quality and Linear Assignment Sorting

AbstractImages sorted by similarity enables more images to be viewed simultaneously, and can be very useful for stock photo agencies or e‐commerce applications. Visually sorted grid layouts attempt to arrange images so that their proximity on the grid corresponds as closely as possible to their similarity. Various metrics exist for evaluating such arrangements, but there is low experimental evidence on correlation between human perceived quality and metric value. We propose distance preservation quality (DPQ) as a new metric to evaluate the quality of an arrangement. Extensive user testing revealed stronger correlation of DPQ with user‐perceived quality and performance in image retrieval tasks compared to other metrics. In addition, we introduce Fast linear assignment sorting (FLAS) as a new algorithm for creating visually sorted grid layouts. FLAS achieves very good sorting qualities while improving run time and computational resources.

Visible tattoos among referees in four European football leagues during the 2021–2022 season

Visible tattoos among referees in four European football leagues during the 2021–2022 season