Shared Understanding
Images as Evidence?: Negotiating the Functions of Images in Science Communication
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Charlotte Bruns
Images are pivotal to communicating science, also due to many platforms and outlets having built-in affordances to add an image when disseminating a text. This leads to images playing an essential role in shaping public understanding and trust in science. As such, images are used as illustrations of a scientific field, as representations of the scientist’s role, or as visual evidence of research findings. However, these functions of images are often contested, as visuals can both clarify and complicate the perception and understanding of scientific facts depending on their context and interpretation. This study focuses on case studies of images used to communicate science on social media platforms and digital news outlets, and how their functions are debated in the comment sections. The content analysis explores both the image-text relation of the posted image and its framing (e.g. in an article or caption), as well as user’s discussions of the image and its framing in the comment sections. Doing so, the study aims to understand how the functions of the images are being disputed in the digital realm, especially in fields like climate change, space exploration, and biomedical research, where visuals often carry heavy symbolic and emotional weight. Ultimately, this paper argues for a nuanced understanding of images in science communication that considers both their evidentiary and interpretive roles, as well as their power to shape public discourse around scientific topics.
Metaphors of Hope : Children’s Image Making During Wartime
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tracey Bowen, M. Max Evans
Hope is something we all grasp for - perhaps cling to, at one time or another. From a literary perspective, Lakoff and colleagues metaphorically defined hope as something one may possess by finding strength through supporting objects, as future orientation through visioning a desired future, and hope as light providing strength. When war broke in Ukraine in February 2022, a group of individuals began collecting and archiving online, drawings created by Ukrainian children in response to the prompt Mom I see war. Over 15,000 drawings were collected and archived providing a public dataset and visual barometer of children’s perspectives of wartime. The drawing data also provided an opportunity to test Lakoff’s textual metaphor framework as useful for better understanding the construction of visual metaphors through drawing. Qualitative analysis surfaced visual motifs drawn by the children that relate to “hope as a possession” including drawings that depicted children holding teddy bears or other stuffed toys, and children at a window with a teddy bear propped on the ledge nearby. “Hope as future orientation” emerged through dark and gray depictions of devastation and war on one side of the picture plane that changed to a happier scenario that included flowers, children and their pets playing, all drawn in bright colours, on the other half. The findings highlight children’s capacity to construct visual metaphors of hope and imagine a brighter future during a traumatic time. The use of visual metaphors also provides opportunities for developing shared understandings of the human experience beyond words.
The Form of Image within Democratic Aesthetics : Toward the Aesthetic Mode of Visual Cultural Analysis
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yi Chen
My study looks at the notion of the 'Form of Image' as conceptualised in my recent monograph 'The Aesthetics of Image and Cultural Forms' (Routledge, 2024). I define ‘Image’ as the modes and styles of visual material presentations. The sensuous materiality of Image is at the core of thinking about the forms of Images. My discussion explores theories of affective aesthetics (e.g 'Obtuse Image', 'Tactile Image') from which point a formalist lens is proposed in the in the exploration of visual material culture. In terms of bridging the singular Image with cultural processes, I argue that the idea of 'cultural aesthetics' is crucial for addressing a continuum of aesthetic experiences. Inspired by Jacques Ranciere's work on the 'politics of aesthetics', my discussion focuses on the registers and perspectives that aid the foregrounding of cultural aesthetics. This is followed by explicating the democratic ethos in exploring 'cultural aesthetics'. I intend to animate the discussion of 'Image' and 'cultural aesthetics' by looking at a series of Images produced in the early 1960s in London. These Images cohere around formalist experimentations that tune into the aesthetic forms of experience at the time. The works in focus include the abstract formal paintings of Richard Smith and exhibition Living City organised by the avant-garde architect group Archigram.
