In “Visual Aspects of Media Literacy,” Paul Messaris discusses the importance of acquiring visual literacy – or the ability to critically examine visual messages. Messaris provides two views of visual literacy, an optimistic and pessimistic one. Positively, visual literacy can broaden an indvivual’s knowledge base and the tools they can utilize to express their own creativity. However, a negative outlook expresses the concern that visual literacy can be nothing more than a way to resist the messages inherent within visual media. Nevertheless, visual literacy is required to understand the subtext within advertisements, films and photographs. Messaris terms the connection between a visual and its subtext “analogical” and states that an analogical representation does not need an clear simiarity between the picture used and what it is meant to symbolize. Moreover, an analogical representation is not confined to abtract concepts. Analogical representations could be used for visualizing quantitative information, such as within graphs, creative interpretation, or conveying controversial messages. Moreover, unlike verbal language, visual language does not have a common set of rules and often needs to utilize words to clarify its messages, such as lines in films that state the passage of time or words on advertisements, such as slogans. Considering the heavy presense of visuals in media, it is importance for educators an scholars to be visually literate and teach visual literacy.
While reading Messaris’ article, I found myself agreeing with his claim that it is necessary to teach students to be visually literate. Looking back on some of my own experiences, I realize visually literacy is not just important so that students can understand the subtext under what is being represented in media, but also so they know how they represent themselves in social media. For instance, social media sites – such as Facebook and Pinterest – rely heavily on visuals to create interest. In most cases, the first thing an individual sees before “friending” someone on Facebook is a profile picture. In this instance, the profile picture is a visual summary of an individual and therefore, it is important for students to realize how they are representing themselves online. Teaching visual literacy is significant in increasing ot just a students understanding of the world at large, but also themselves in relation to social media.
-Kiran Heer
Work Cited: Messaris, P. (1998). Visual Aspects of Media Literacy. Journal of Communication, 48(1), 70-80.
2 responses so far ↓
TMD // Sep 19th 2012 at 6:49 am
Thanks for the excellent post, Kiran. You remark, “In most cases, the first thing an individual sees before “friending” someone on Facebook is a profile picture. In this instance, the profile picture is a visual summary of an individual and therefore, it is important for students to realize how they are representing themselves online.” I agree with this statement. It’s true as well that an individual’s outward appearance (clothing, hair and potentially makeup style) is a visual summary for people in face-to-face environments. So it would seem your statement could be extended to include settings other than online settings.
Katie // Sep 19th 2012 at 4:31 pm
This is true. One thing I learned in a reading class a long time ago had to do with visual literacy and how a laundry detergent company made an add of all pictures that showed:
dirty laundry > soap/machine > clean laundry
they thought that this would be a great add that they could use in any country, no matter the language. It was a good idea because more people could understand quickly.
However… people with languages that read right to left thought that the soap would make their clothes dirty. 😉
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