{"title":"A scanner darkly: augmented reality face filters as algorithmic images","authors":"Ruggero Eugeni","doi":"10.1177/14703572241235286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241235286","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines augmented reality filters applied to users’ faces, or ARFaces, a visual technology that has spread with increasing success since 2015, mainly through social media. In the first part, the article highlights four significant issues that have emerged about ARFaces: the risks of Body Dysmorphic Disorders linked to beautification filters; the new personal and immediate relationships with brands linked to branded ARFaces; the adoption of filters by a new generation of artists and creatives; and the risks of surveillance related to the face recognition technology on which they are based. The second part of the article argues that ARFaces represent a symptomatic example of ‘algorithmic images’. This type of image modifies the logic of ‘technical images’ that characterised previous media as it shifts the centre of gravity of the processes of the visual constitution from the remote transfer of information to the automated extraction and processing of data. In its conclusions, the article outlines some conceptual tools for dealing with algorithmic images: the author proposes developing a political economy of light and analysing its transformation from a support infrastructure for a political economy of the visual to a supply structure for a data economy.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141882356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In praise of visual representation: an inquiry into text analysis and network visualization for charting scientific communities","authors":"Dario Rodighiero","doi":"10.1177/14703572241248408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241248408","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a visual investigation into scientific communities through the lens of language. Inspired by actor-network theory, the study examines how individuals establish connections through shared vocabularies and, consequently, how communities organize themselves into linguistic groups. Using scientific texts to map the lexical dimension, the premise posits that research communities can be visually represented by their members and the words they employ, favouring the comprehension of social structures. The research draws from a decade-long personal experimentation with language-based visual models, to explore how research communities appear according to their lexicon, in which each individual is intricately intertwined. Employing cutting-edge techniques of text analysis and network visualization, the study analyses, organizes and maps scientific communities, clustering individuals into thematic groups based on their language use. The findings are presented through a series of projects that delve into the analytical power of images and unveil novel visual methods to better understand the spatial dynamics of language and communities.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141797745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen, Brian L Due, Louise Lüchow
{"title":"The eye at hand: when visually impaired people distribute ‘seeing’ with sensing AI","authors":"Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen, Brian L Due, Louise Lüchow","doi":"10.1177/14703572241227517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241227517","url":null,"abstract":"What does it mean to see and look? Can seeing and looking be done without using the eyes? This article contributes to studies in visual communication through empirical visual research into human vision, visual impairment and computer vision technologies, using video-ethnographic methods. These topics essentially enable a respecification of the concept of vision, the role of visual and material culture, and the exploration of visual means of communication in social and cultural worlds. In this article, the authors advance the understanding of visuality and vision by showing empirically how ‘seeing’ and ‘looking’ are not uniquely human abilities, but rather informational phenomena that can be achieved through distribution with a technological, nonhuman sensing AI. This study draws on video-recorded data in which visually impaired persons (VIPs) use a smartphone with a computer vision-based app while grocery shopping in a supermarket. Based on video ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA), they show the orderly, practical organization of four specific practices: (1) fleeting glancing; (2) searching; (3) identifying; and (4) locating. In the examples, these ordinary human practices for achieving visual information are done while using the technology as a handheld ‘eye’. This research contributes to studies in visual impairment, visuospatial organization and the use of AI consumer products in a context of cultural practices for accomplishing the act of looking at and picking up grocery products. The article contributes new knowledge on visuality by expanding the concept of distributed perception and by suggesting a praxeological respecification of achieving visuospatial perception as an action in the world.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141504161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performing different forms of ‘sociable authenticity’ in five bakery shops in Sweden using the semla pastry as a prominent multimodal resource","authors":"Åsa Kroon","doi":"10.1177/14703572241241452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241241452","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how five bakeries in a mid-sized Swedish town communicate with their (potential) customers using different forms of ‘authentic’ displays of the much-loved seasonal pastry, the semla (a particular type of Lenten bun). Authenticity is understood as strategies of communicating with potential customers and passers-by in ways that make them feel included in a successful, sociable relationship with the bakery in question (see Scannell’s, 2001, article, ‘Authenticity and experience’). Specifically, various semla artefacts are used in the shop window/entrance as strategies to ‘talk to and interact with’ passers-by. However, these semla displays are not recognized as advertising by the bakers themselves. While previous research on authenticity, food discourse and ideology have identified traditional, natural and elite authenticity as expressed in relation to specific social groups, this study shows how authenticity may harbour oppositional values and seemingly incoherent ways of addressing customers in relation to such questions as power, eliteness and class. One explanation for these more subtly distinctive authenticity performances may be found in Swedish culture which has less social class distinction. This may, in turn, mean that certain establishments and products may not be as prominently class imprinted as others when it comes to how they address customers. Such a culture may create a more blended range of authenticity expressions.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141346433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender bias in movie posters through the lens of Spatial Agency Bias","authors":"Leonard AW Memon","doi":"10.1177/14703572231206461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231206461","url":null,"abstract":"Research has shown that women are perceived as having less agency than men. Numerous studies have found portrayals of gender inequality in different aspects of media, including movie posters. However, no study has examined movie posters to assess portrayals of agency between genders. This study attempts to fill the literature gap by examining the top 250 grossing movie posters of all time in the US through the lens of Spatial Agency Bias to determine if there are differences in portrayed agency based on one’s gender in movie posters. The two levels of the independent variable – gender – are female and male, and the two levels of the dependent variable – spatial positioning – are left and right. A chi-squared test of independence was utilized to determine whether there were statistically significant levels of gender stereotyping in movie posters with regard to agency. The study found that women are portrayed in positions of less agency compared to men on movie posters. The implications of this study are gender inequality in various contexts through the unfavorable stereotyping of women relative to men in their perceived levels of agency. Although the causes of this discrepancy were outside the scope of this study, potential causes, implications, solutions, and future directions are discussed.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141119682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visualizing dementia and stigma: a scoping review of the literature","authors":"Emma Putland, Gavin Brookes","doi":"10.1177/14703572241245587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241245587","url":null,"abstract":"Discursive choices are recognized by both academic and dementia communities as being central to the perpetuation (or challenging) of dementia-related stigma. Yet, the focus of the vast majority of research on the discursive dynamics of dementia stigma to date has been on the role of language only, effectively failing to regard the multimodal reality of discourse. The present study aims to address this gap by conducting a scoping review of the smaller, and relatively more recent, body of literature that has examined visual modes of communication. The authors ask the following questions: (1) What theories of stigma have informed or guided studies of visual representations of dementia and people with dementia? (2) What visual features of representations of dementia and people with dementia might contribute to and/or challenge dementia stigma? Using Scopus, PubMed, PsychInfo and Google Scholar, 10 papers published between January 2000 and July 2023 were selected and thematically synthesized. The authors found that most studies had limited or no engagement with specific stigma theories, although the general principle of establishing or challenging distance between an in-group (‘us’) and out-group (‘them’) informed many of the analyses. Visual features with the potential to contribute to stigma tended to impersonalize people with dementia through foregrounding visual markers of dementia (oftentimes emphasizing loss and/or the brain) and establishing symbolic distance between viewers/other represented participants and people with dementia. This distance could be achieved through visual framing techniques (regarding angle, gaze, colour, setting) which, for instance, could subtly position people with dementia as the ‘living dead’. There was much less focus on visual features with the potential to challenge stigma, which together emphasized social connection, transformation and taking the perspective of someone with dementia. Turning to reception, another potential aspect of challenging stigma was reinterpreting supposedly ‘stigmatizing’ images. In this article, these findings are interpreted in relation to the broader stigma literature and implications for future research and advocacy efforts are discussed.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141063345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From photo documentation to photo diagrams: a technique to make civic ecologies present and legible","authors":"Sarah Jane Jones, Alexandra Crosby, Ilaria Vanni","doi":"10.1177/14703572231218418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572231218418","url":null,"abstract":"The visualization of nature in cities fundamentally impacts how we imagine the urban environment and our role in caring for it. Across Australia, the project of urban renewal imagines and designs specific typologies of urban nature. These typologies can obscure grass root forms of environmental stewardship and their connection through civic ecologies. Yet, at this time of environmental change, residents’ engagement with urban ecologies is vital. What role might visual communication play in helping to make these civic ecologies initiatives more legible? This article discusses an experiment creating photo diagrams, which expands visual methodologies used in place-based research, such as photo documentation and visual ethnography. Iterative photography augmented by ethnographies enables us to ‘read’ the landscape. Diagrams support us in expanding the photographs in three crucial moves. First, desaturation reveals examples of civic ecologies. Second, tracing exposes the networks and relations that constitute them. And, third, text and lines of flight draw out how civic ecologies extend beyond specific sites and connect to other places. In this way, this article makes three contributions. The first is to experiment with ways to make grass root civic ecologies legible in their complexities to recuperate practices marginalized by top-down socio-ecological processes of urban renewal. The second proposes photo diagrams as a medium moving between photography as descriptive documentation and documentation of non-representational dimensions. Finally, the third brings a visual communication perspective into debates on conveying the non-representational in visual form.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140965504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reham Farouk El Shazly, M. E. Falaky, Randa Khalil
{"title":"Sculpting Foucauldian power in Game of Thrones as a transmedia project: a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis","authors":"Reham Farouk El Shazly, M. E. Falaky, Randa Khalil","doi":"10.1177/14703572241239501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241239501","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyses the textual, visual and interactional modes employed in creating and representing Daenerys Targaryen in both Home Box Office TV show Game of Thrones and mobile game Reigns: Game of Thrones as a transmedia project to guide users’ construal of the notion of embodied power. The authors examine the structural, functional and semiotic elements that the two media orchestrate to represent how power is attained, developed and relinquished. The results indicate that the two texts/media put forward two different kinds of power (relations) and levels of users’ interactivity. The TV show employs a more linear and developmental conception of power characterizing Daenerys as a transferrable object of power while the game underlines a more dispersed and pervasive notion of power to decentre absolute power. The show deploys immersive cinematic representations/visual spectacle, converging/diverging serial narration that goes beyond the opulent mise-en-scène and complex scenes to attract users’ attention. As for the game, it deploys intellectual and emotional interactivity, choice and coherence that allow users to experience the story, mechanics and environment as users identify with Daenerys. While the show introduces a host of socipolitical tools to maintain longer reign as different forms of governmentality, the game characterizes disciplinary power where subjects/users are offered training opportunities under the designer’s gaze to internalize a series of procedures and sociopolitical tactics. The findings reiterate Foucault’s notion of power as a system of relations, a capillary power that circulates and subjectifies, whilst subjects/users are spaces where subtractive and productive power are wielded, enacted and/or resisted. Each medium deploys its semiotic-specific resources to create meaning differently. While the TV show relies heavily on visual resources and narrative techniques to make meaning, the game mobilizes certain verbo-visual and interactive resources to make meaning. With the growing attention given to transmedia projects as a social practice with social meanings, this article claims to offer critical implications for social semioticians, film creators and game designers through a systematic analytical framework with a special focus on visual meanings.","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140970299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Feminist Designer: On the Personal and the Political in Design","authors":"Linda Knight","doi":"10.1177/14703572241239503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241239503","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140971781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Literacy and Identity through Streaming Media: Kids, Teens, and Representation on Netflix","authors":"Virginia Rosa Da Silva","doi":"10.1177/14703572241239488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14703572241239488","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51671,"journal":{"name":"Visual Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140969588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}