Visual Frame Research Articles

Visual Framing of Climate Change in Selected Newspapers in Kenya

Raw information on issues such as climate change and the environment can be incomprehensible and meaningless to segments of the media audience. To ease audience's understanding of such information, the media may filter and (re)construct both the information and the experiences that generated it; this is called framing. This study analysed how climate change is visually framed in selected print media in a bid to understand how this could influence the audience's understanding of climate change information. This study was guided by the Framing Theory. Data was collected from two newspapers in Kenya (The Standard and Daily Nation) published between January 2013 and December 2017 which were purposively sampled due to their wide circulation and coverage. Qualitative content analysis was used both as a methodology and a data collection tool and the data analysed thematically. The study findings indicated that visuals were rarely used in the selected newspapers. From the findings, the depiction of actors was mainly based on their social class. The most dominant visual frame was the politicians and talking head frame. A new frame that was depicted in this study was the humour imagery frame. The causes of climate change are depicted as small causes and small solutions, but the impacts are depicted as large scale which can lead to low self-efficacy amongst the citizens. This study concludes that visual framing of climate change is an area not fully embraced by the media in presenting climate change, yet it offers an array of opportunities to communicate the climate change message.

The thousand faces of images in AI news: psychological distance, dialectical relationships and sensationalism

ABSTRACT Existing research on media coverage of AI has mostly focused on textual analysis with a lack of attention to visual factors presented in news. Moreover, studies of visual framing often rely on a small sample of manually labeled images and thus suffer from a low ecological validity. To address these issues, we used image data obtained from AItopics to cluster the images through the Resnet50 deep learning model and Kmeans++. Three major visual frames based on 10 clustering results were identified via open coding: psychological distance, dialectical relationships, and sensationalism. Specifically, by displaying a more lifelike and materialistic image of AI, news may shorten the psychological distance between readers and AI; by juxtaposing two opposite entities, news may reinforce a dialectical relationship between humans and AI; through the use of colors and symbols, news may become sensationalized and elicit affective reactions from readers. Our findings provide a new framework for analyzing media visuals about AI, and highlight the need that media reporting be more comprehensive, balanced, and objective in their selection of images to communicate topics of the like.

Visual framing during crisis: a 10-year systematic review

PurposeThis paper presents a 10-year systematic review of research on the visual framing of crises to identify the priorities, theories applied and trends in the scholarship of visual framing during crises. The gaps are analyzed to provide evidence-based recommendations for advancing future research.Design/methodology/approachA total of 269 articles published in 156 peer-reviewed communication journals between January 2014 to December 2023 were reviewed. Data were analyzed using open and axial qualitative coding. A codebook was developed for the quantitative coding and data were analyzed in SPSS descriptive statistics and chi-square tests to answer the research questions.FindingsThe proportion of visual framing of crises has remained the same in the last 10 years – there is significantly more research on the visual framing of non-crises. Overall, research on the visual framing of crises is largely exploratory/descriptive and could benefit from a research agenda that is more theory driven. Additionally, there is a skewed focus for research on North America compared to other regions, and for political communication and climate compared to other themes. Environmental sciences and engineering are the most widely investigated journal fields, while disaster is the most common typology studied when looking at the visual framing of crises.Research limitations/implicationsThe systematic literature review has some limitations – most particularly that the sample was drawn from a single publisher, which may not be exhaustive enough to represent the full population of articles in the field of visual communication. However, it is a systematic review of the publications that are officially aligned with three of the major communication organizations – the International Communication Association, National Communication Association and World Communication Association. However, future research considering the inclusion of an additional publishers, like Emerald, would further enrich scholarship in visual framing during crises. Second, manual coding of the articles could present potential differences in analysis and interpretation by other researchers. Despite the limitations, the study also provides some important insights into the present and future of the visual framing of crises.Practical implicationsAddressing gaps in the internationalization of visual crisis communication would expand studies for visual framing among underrepresented communities such as populations with low reading literacy, gender minorities and displaced communities and inform visual framing strategies for government and relevant institutions as primary information disseminators during crises.Social implicationsAddressing the gaps identified in this systematic literature review on the visual framing of crises is important for extending theory in this relatively nascent field and guiding crisis visual framing strategies to mitigate uncertainty and panic, threats to stakeholder relationships, social vulnerabilities and the visual framing of stakeholder-centric crisis responses.Originality/valueBased on available literature, this is the first systematic literature review investigating the use of all types of visuals used during all crisis typologies, reflecting the ubiquity of crises and the increased focus on the use of visuals in crisis communication in the last decade.

Rise of Digital Influencer Marketing

Virtual influencer marketing is a global emerging phenomenon in social media research. Research on traditional influencer marketing and practices has been the locus of attention for years, but fairly scarce research deals with the rise and influence of virtual influencers, also known as artificial intelligence influencers (AIIs) or computer-generated influencers (CGIs). In this article, an explorative, qualitative single case analysis of the Japanese CGI influencer Imma is presented to identify how the CGI is visually constructed on Instagram in a marketing campaign. Two supplementary semiotic lenses are applied, i.e. a visual compositional analysis and a semiotic image analysis. The results indicate that the CGI influencer Imma is visually presented by and large with the same characteristics and attributes as found in similar studies of human influencers. Moreover, the findings indicate subtle yet essential differences in the visual framing of the CGI character to enhance a human-like appearance. Concludingly, this study has preliminary implications for research, practitioners, prospective marketers, and future innovation leaders in the virtual marketing industry, and it is proposed to consider reconceptualizing our understanding of virtual influencers and acknowledging the rise of Virtual Influencer Marketing as a field in its own right.

Effects of Visual Framing in Multimodal Media Environments: A Systematic Review of Studies Between 1979 and 2023

Framing is considered an important theoretical perspective for analyzing the influence of media information. Despite the explicit inclusion of visual elements within established frame definitions, visuals have long been marginalized in framing research. Based on a systematic review of 552 articles addressing visual framing, this article closely investigates 72 empirical studies on visual/multimodal framing effects. Drawing on framing as a multidimensional process, we discuss how existing studies have examined the sensory, affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of impact. We explain the rising importance of visual communication and multimodality and conclude with implications for mass communication and visual journalism.

Analyzing the Communication of Poverty Governance: A Study of Multimodal News Framing and Engagement on Chinese TikTok

Poverty communication is a critical yet challenging aspect of promoting sustainable development goals (SDGs) globally. This study explores poverty-related news narratives on Douyin (China’s TikTok) and examines their impact on user engagement (likes, shares, and comments). The primary objective is to refine communication strategies aimed at alleviating poverty. Drawing primarily on the news framing theory, this study analyzes 400 short-video news from Douyin in 2020 through regression analysis, complemented by insights from Chinese mobile news practitioners. Findings suggest that episodic-gain coverage, which emphasizes real-life scenarios and individual determination, effectively engages users. Visual framing devices, including action-driven and speech-driven opening scenes, captivate viewers and mobilize social support. Additionally, this study reveals that storytelling redundancy enhances news engagement by improving perceptual fluency in short videos. Moreover, tailored rhetorical strategies for short videos, such as subjective expressions and question-based headlines, further evoke the exchange of users’ social values. In conclusion, Douyin plays a central role in the ongoing process of media convergence in China. The study explores how platforms such as Douyin can promote SDGs, encourage public participation in addressing poverty and social care, and provide valuable insights for news content creators seeking to enhance storytelling and engagement in mobile media.

Mediatization and Mystique. Volodymyr Zelensky’s Self-Presentation on Instagram

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This study uses mediatization theory and Goffman’s concept of self-presentation to explain the inseparable role of social media in the rise of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukrainian politics and, since the Russian invasion, world consciousness. From the start, his political persona has been governed far more by media logic than political calculation, although the former has translated into the latter. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The analysis explores how Zelensky develops an iconic communication style through visual framing and other mediation techniques. Towards this end, we conduct a visual content analysis of images posted to his official Instagram account across three points in time: his candidacy, presidency before the invasion, and first year of the invasion. 100 images are sampled from each time period and subjected to detailed visual and nonverbal analysis. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Employing framing theory and Goffman’s notion of self-presentation, the study explains the Ukrainian leader’s skillful use of visual and nonverbal messaging to project an image of an everyman president and, beginning with the February 2022 invasion, emergent soldier-in-chief. The analysis also shows how specific visual appeals (e.g., facial expressions, Ukrainian symbols) and background settings influence Zelensky’s presentation over time. RESEARCH RESULTS: Results show how the inclusion of more political, and then diplomatic and military, elites in posts during his presidency and year one of the invasion positions Zelensky as a recognized leader while solidifying his status as soldier-in-chief. Indeed, the ubiquity and universality of his soldier persona have become a widely recognized symbol of the fight for democratic freedom. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The study illustrates how Zelensky utilizes social media, Instagram in particular, as a platform for compelling self-presentation while communicating a message of national unity and resolve. His ubiquitous media presence has introduced a new perspective on leadership during wartime.

The influence of visual and textual frames on people’s perception of migrants

This study investigated how the combination of textual and visual frames influences the attribution of responsibility for arrest and deportation of undocumented migrants and empathy. A 3 visual frame: (no photo, stereotypical photo, counter-stereotypical photo) × 2 textual frame: (episodic, thematic) between-subjects online experiment revealed that including a counter-stereotypical photograph in both episodic and thematic news stories had a positive effect on empathy for undocumented migrants but did not affect responsibility for arrest and deportation. Adding a stereotypical photograph to an episodic news story significantly reduced societal responsibility for arrest and deportation and decreased the level of empathy.

A paradoxical misperception of relative motion.

Motion perception is considered a hyperacuity. The presence of a visual frame of reference to compute relative motion is necessary to achieve this sensitivity [Legge, Gordon E., and F. W. Campbell. "Displacement detection in human vision." Vision Research 21.2 (1981): 205-213.]. However, there is a special condition where humans are unable to accurately detect relative motion: images moving in a direction consistent with retinal slip where the motion is unnaturally amplified can, under some conditions, appear stable [Arathorn, David W., et al. "How the unstable eye sees a stable and moving world." Journal of Vision 13.10.22 (2013)]. In this study, we asked: Is world-fixed retinal image background content necessary for the visual system to compute the direction of eye motion to render in the percept images moving with amplified slip as stable? Or, are non-visual cues sufficient? Subjects adjusted the parameters of a stimulus moving in a random trajectory to match the perceived motion of images moving contingent to the retina. Experiments were done with and without retinal image background content. The perceived motion of stimuli moving with amplified retinal slip was suppressed in the presence of visual content; however, higher magnitudes of motion were perceived under conditions with no visual cues. Our results demonstrate that the presence of retinal image background content is essential for the visual system to compute its direction of motion. The visual content that might be thought to provide a strong frame of reference to detect amplified retinal slips, instead paradoxically drives the misperception of relative motion.

Visualising War / Peace Photographs: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Asian News Sites’ Coverage of the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

Abstract This study analyses the visual coverage of the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian conflict on Asian news sites, utilising the frameworks of war and peace journalism. Conducting a content analysis of 397 images from seven leading Asian news sites, we contribute to the literature on visual coverage, particularly from online platforms. Our analysis identifies the predominant visual narratives employed by these news sites and offers insights into variations in coverage intensity, regional and ethnic focuses, portrayal of age groups, and depiction of harm. The study extends the understanding of framing theory by analysing visual frames, providing valuable implications for future visual studies and contributing to a deeper understanding of conflict portrayal in online news media.

Visual frame analysis of the UKIP leave campaigns ‘Turkish migrant’ Brexit visuals

ABSTRACT The lead up to the 23 June 2016 democratic divorce of the United Kingdom from the European Union observed rigorous campaigning from the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ spectrums. Immigration was high on the agenda, with UKIP’s leave campaign commissioning seven visuals focusing on migration from Turkey, with this anti-immigration rhetoric receiving much criticism. This study analysed these visuals by performing a semiotic and visual frame analysis. The findings present important indications of how politicians utilize existing connotations and ‘othering’ ideologies to influence political decisions, and the messages in accordance with the socio-political climate prevalent at the time. It was found that the visuals relied heavily on connotations appropriated upon the Turkish identity, and their previously invested-in self-other ideologies, enabling the visuals to transcend a greater message. Simultaneously, pre-existing antagonism connected to immigration was also utilized within a setting of political distrust. The rhetoric promoted basing Brexit on Turkey’s entrance to the Union, omitting the Union from the equation and question.

Visual Framing of Afghan Refugees in Global News Media

This study content analyzed visual frames of Afghan refugees during the first six months of the Taliban’s second regime (from August 15, 2021, to February 15, 2022). A total of N = 1,948 images from the Associated Press were quantitatively analyzed for focal point, topic, tone, depiction, gender, and age. The findings indicate that Afghan refugees were predominantly the primary focal points of the AP images, with significantly more positive and active frames than negative and passive frames. In contrast to previous research on the framing of Afghan women in Western media before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Afghan women were framed significantly as more positive and active than Afghan men in the photos.

‘Behold, it’s new’: Photojournalism and political communication in Zimbabwe

Visuals hold a special place in the field of communication. Politicians, in a move to position themselves or market their activities, use visuals that stand as a testimony to their principles. However, their importance and value in political communication are not highly reflected in academic literature. This article is built from this understudied field by looking at the role photojournalists play in framing opposition political parties in Zimbabwe. Photographs are important tools in politics as evidenced by experimental research on political communication that found that ‘a single photograph can have a clear impact on voters’ judgements regarding a candidate’s demeanour, competence, leadership ability, attractiveness, likeableness, and integrity’. This study seeks to analyse photographs that were used by photojournalists to frame the newly formed political party, amidst the power struggles within the party, and political repression from the authoritarian regime. Informed by visual framing, the study found that photojournalists framed Nelson Chamisa as youthful and vibrant while his party was seen as resembling the new dawn. However, photographs also showed that Chamisa and his party had nothing to offer as they did not have a constitution, guiding policy nor a clear ideology.

Automation of visual communication and aesthetic construction of national image: a computational aesthetic analysis of social bots on Twitter

Abstract Vision and aesthetics are inseparable dimensions of national image building. Based on 106,562 China-related images from Twitter (renamed as X), this paper introduced a computational aesthetic approach to investigate the visual communication activities of social bots on Twitter and compared the similarities and differences between human and bot accounts’ posted images so as to explore the influence of social bots’ aesthetic strategies. The results show that social bots have displayed different aesthetic strategies in the construction of the China-related visual frame, and formed obvious stylistic differences with humans in brightness, saturation, color, etc. Negative binomial regression indicates that the aesthetic strategies of social bots contribute to more likes and shares. The automation of visual communication and aesthetic construction not only makes the global building and communication of national image face new situations and challenges, but also pushes the whole human visual aesthetic, creation, and communication activities under the potential subjectivity crisis.

Action-guided CycleGAN for Bi-directional Video Prediction

Most of the earlier proposed action prediction methods, such as PoseGAN, C2GAN, etc. are limited to unidirectional prediction and not intended to perform the desired class of action. In this paper, we propose an action-guided Cycle Generative Adversarial Network (AGCGAN), which is a bi-directional video prediction model to anticipate future frames from current visual frames and vice versa. The proposed CycleGAN architecture consists of two generators and two discriminators along with two additional keypoint detectors to make keypoint loss measurements. The adversarial and cycle losses perform the appearance modelling whereas the keypoint loss provides the necessary motion correction. We evaluated the effectiveness of our proposed method on the UT-Interaction dataset. Furthermore, we also tested our model on the standard Market-1501 dataset against the state-of-the-art schemes. Results show that our proposed method provides comparable visual quality with the state-of-the-art methods.

Highlighting Heroes and Ignoring Villains: Visual Framing of Polio and Polio Vaccine in Newspapers

ABSTRACT Polio vaccine hesitancy remains high in Pakistan due to various socio-political, religious, and economic factors. To address this, the government of Pakistan and its international partners such as UNICEF have devised a multipronged communication strategy to counter resistance to polio vaccine in hard-to-reach areas of the country. In this strategy, mainstream news media has been identified as a key stakeholder, as they have the potential to reach a wide range of population and disseminate easy to understand messages including both visuals and text. However, less scholarly attention has been paid to how mainstream news media in Pakistan frame polio and polio vaccine in their visuals. This study aims to fill this gap. Using visual framing as a theoretical framework, we analyzed 115 images from three selected newspapers published from 2010 to 2022. Our results suggest that the newspapers depicted hard-to-reach areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which were more affected by polio and highlighted the criminality and securitization of polio vaccine in the country. In addition, female polio healthcare workers, who are instrumental in eradicating the disease, have been given marginal coverage, reflecting the importance of gender sensitivity in the region. Overall, this study contributes to the fields of visual communication, health communication, and international communication, particularly related to the Global South.

Text-Mining and Video Analytics of COVID-19 Narratives Shared by Patients on YouTube.

This study explores how individuals who have experienced COVID-19 share their stories on YouTube, focusing on the nature of information disclosure, public engagement, and emotional impact pertaining to consumer health. Using a dataset of 186 YouTube videos, we used text mining and video analytics techniques to analyze textual transcripts and visual frames to identify themes, emotions, and their relationship with viewer engagement metrics. Findings reveal eight key themes: infection origins, symptoms, treatment, mental well-being, isolation, prevention, government directives, and vaccination. While viewers engaged most with videos about infection origins, treatment, and vaccination, fear and sadness in the text consistently drove views, likes, and comments. Visuals primarily conveyed happiness and sadness, but their influence on engagement varied. This research highlights the crucial role YouTube plays in disseminating COVID-19 patient narratives and suggests its potential for improving health communication strategies. By understanding how emotions and content influence viewer engagement, healthcare professionals and public health officials can tailor their messaging to better connect with the public and address pandemic-related anxieties.

When controversy meets controversy, what do you see? Understanding the visual communication of cannabis companies’ corporate social advocacy on Instagram

While businesses are increasingly active in raising voices for social and political issues, known as corporate social advocacy (CSA), the strategies, impacts, and ethics of controversial businesses’ CSA are largely unknown. This study draws on the visual framing theory and CSA literature to explore how visual framings are constructed in cannabis companies’ CSA and their effects on public engagement (i.e., likes and comments) on Instagram. Findings from content analysis of 502 Instagram posts by 42 cannabis companies reveal that cannabis companies construct the meaning of CSA via various visual strategies. However, they may still have a long way to go before initiating authentic image-based CSA. Regression analyses found that gender, color, and issue category are among influential visual characteristics that can foster or impede public engagement, raising critical consideration of cannabis companies’ positionality in corporate activism. This study advances the theory-driven, nuanced, and contextualized understanding of corporate communication in today’s polarized public opinion environment and increasingly visual-focused media landscape.

Moderación por el género de los efectos del encuadre visual de mensajes COVID-19 sobre emociones negativas

Un reciente meta-análisis reveló que mensajes persuasivos enmarcados en ganancias inducen emociones positivas en la audiencia mientras que mensajes encuadrados en pérdidas inducen emociones negativas; más aún, la experiencia de emociones positivas potencia la influencia de los encuadramientos de ganancia mientras que las emociones negativas aumentan los efectos de los enmarques de pérdida. Esto sugiere que los efectos de los encuadres de ganancia versus pérdida en la adherencia del público al mensaje son mediados por emociones. Como se sabe que las mujeres experimentan más emociones negativas que los hombres, en el presente estudio exploratorio nosotros evaluamos sesgos de género en las emociones negativas inducidas por imágenes que acompañaban a textos con recomendaciones nutricionales para prevenir la severidad de los síntomas de COVID-19. Los textos estuvieron encuadrados en no-pérdidas. Usando fotos de un ataúd versus una familia, encontramos una robusta interacción imagen x género entre trabajadores de un hospital en Lima, Perú: mientras que el ataúd tendía a aumentar las emociones negativas de las mujeres, aquellas de los hombres presentaban una tendencia opuesta. Así, concluimos que la intervención de emociones en un mismo proceso de persuasión puede terminar en adherencias diferentes de hombres y mujeres al mensaje y esto debe estudiarse. Los investigadores que ignoren la variable género en el encuadramiento visual de mensajes pueden arribar a conclusiones distorsionadas.

Sounding Video Generator: A Unified Framework for Text-Guided Sounding Video Generation

As a combination of visual and audio signals, video is inherently multi-modal. However, existing video generation methods are primarily intended for the synthesis of visual frames, whereas audio signals in realistic videos are disregarded. In this work, we concentrate on a rarely investigated problem of text-guided sounding video generation and propose the Sounding Video Generator (SVG), a unified framework for generating realistic videos along with audio signals. Specifically, we present the SVG-VQGAN to transform visual frames and audio mel-spectrograms into discrete tokens. SVG-VQGAN applies a novel hybrid contrastive learning method to model inter-modal and intra-modal consistency and improve the quantized representations. A cross-modal attention module is employed to extract associated features of visual frames and audio signals for contrastive learning. Then, a Transformer-based decoder is used to model associations between texts, visual frames, and audio signals at token level for auto-regressive sounding video generation. AudioSet-Cap, a human annotated text-video-audio paired dataset, is produced for training SVG. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our method when compared with existing text-to-video generation methods as well as audio generation methods on Kinetics and VAS datasets.