Date: 15/10/15

BROADCAST JOURNALISM

Assignment

Define visual culture. Do you think we have become a visual

society today?

Its a visual world and people respond to visuals. - Joe Sacco

Visuals in todays world have acquired such a significant hold on our

lives that it exists around us in every form, everywhere. Society
requires transmission of information for its sustenance. The way we
get to know information is highly dependent on visuals and majorly
consists of it. Our mobile phones, laptops, television, ATM machines,
etc., employ visuals to serve their purpose.

To some, visual culture may seem to claim too broad a scope to be

of practical use. It is true that visual culture will not sit comfortably
in already existing university structures. It is part of an emerging
body of post disciplinary academic endeavours from cultural studies,
gay and lesbian studies, to African-American studies, and so on,
whose focus crosses the borders of traditional academic disciplines
at will. In this sense, visual culture is a tactic, not an academic
discipline (Routledge, 1999).

Long before reaching the technically advanced society we live in,

text had been of primitive importance as visuals stand today. The
written word was the only source to reach people at varsity and put
forward ideas. This is the reason that the older generations today
prefer the text over the visuals, being bought up in that kind of an
era. Text lives today as well, and in fact is more trustable than the
visual. But in the coexistence of the two, the latter has emerged out
to be far more dominant today. The realization that spectatorship
(the look, the gaze, the glance, the practices of observation,
surveillance, and visual pleasure) may be as deep a problem as
various forms of reading (decipherment, decoding, interpretation,
etc) and that visual experience or visual literacy might not be fully
explicable in the model of texuality (Mitchell, 1994).

The visual is a weapon today, to say something without actually

saying it. As the saying goes, Use a picture. It is worth a thousand
words by Arthur Brisbane, images carry with them a message that
is interpreted by the reader upon his/her discretion. Pictures have a
political angle to them that not only adds to something visually but
more as meaningfully. Newspapers today have pictures supporting
their textual matter. The pictures provide an angle to how the reader
is eventually going to interpret the story as. It creates a relationship
of the article with the reader which then primarily decides whether
the person is going to the read it, and if yes, then how is he/she
going to interpret it. For example a picture of the Indian Prime
Minister, Narendra Modi, addressing people for upcoming Bihar
elections taken from his back, from an upper angle facing the public,
says a lot more than just it looks. Cartoon strips featured in
newspapers today take on major issues and figures in society
without actually saying it directly.

Films and television today are the major visual sources today for the
public to understand life. These medium hold the power to shape
ideas, influence trends, change mindsets and convey truth to
masses in a visual manner. These emerging industries themselves
show how important visuals today are. News reporting on television
shows news facts with substantial video evidence that makes it even
more believable for the viewer adding a spectacle sort of touch to
the event.

It is this surplus of experience that moves the different components

of the visual signor semiotic circuit into a relation with each other.
Such moments of intense and surprising visual power evoke, in
David Freedergs phrase, admiration, awe, terror and desire. This
dimension to visual culture is at the heart of all visual events
(Routledge, 1994). The visuals are a way of life today. Every industry
is dominated by it today, for the power it holds with it to impact
people and influence minds.