The usage of an image with a caption itself provides meaning to the viewer and if used accordingly, it can evoke reactions from the viewer as well (May et al., 2012). Additionally, they have added that the usage of captions and cutlines can eliminate the sense of ambiguity of an image. With these concepts in mind, the creator of an image can alter the meaning of the image to suit a certain criteria. This process is considered unethical and may lead to political complications if the image was used in fields such as photojournalism (Lester, 1999). Such examples can be seen in images taken in war where the creator of the image uses a caption to either further increase the impact of the image or to create a meaning that contradicts the image (Quinn and Spence, 2004). An example of this can be seen in the picture below.
The image depicts a woman with her nose cut off and a caption that says 'what happens if we leave Afghanistan'. The caption itself has been placed in the image solely to get more sympathy from the readers and distracts from the fact that there are international coalition forces that risk their lives in the country.
References:
- Lester, P. M. (1991). Photojournalism: An Ethical Approach. New Jersey: Lawrance Erlbaum Publishers.
- May, W., Fidler, S., Fazly, A., Dickinson, S., & Stevenson, S. (2012, June). Unsupervised Disambiguation of Image Captions. Paper presented at the First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, Ontario: Canada.
- Quinn, A. and Spence, E. (2004, July). Manipulation in Photojournalism: Is it Ethical? Is it Corrupt? Paper presented at the ANZCA Conference, Sydney: Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment