1. Media and Visual Literacy
What are the components of Media Literacy?

2. What Does It Mean To Be Literate?
Narrowest meaning:
Reading ability – verbal texts
Fluent, critical reading ability
To be educated, cultured – ‘well read
Wider meaning - visual + media literacy:
Components of ability to ‘read’ visual images?
Relationship to diverse fields –e.g. art, design, film studies, photography?

3. Visual Communication
Encoding, transmission, reception, decoding + interpretation of visual messages
Our focus: analysis of visual phenomena - both content + function – mass communication process
Vision abilities:
Biological – optical + neurological capacities
Mental, emotional – responses to visual encounters
Interpretive – meaning we make of decoded information

4. Example

5. Media Literacy: Definition
Visual Literacy: term first used – John Debes
Media Literacy: our cognitive skills deployed in the production, reception, interpretation, use and critique of visual imagery in the mass media

6. Is There A ‘Visual Language’?
Verbal Language:
Components – phonemes, morphemes, words,
Phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, genres
Systematically organised – ‘rules’ evolved over centuries
Is there a comparable visual language?
Visual Literacy (concept): underlying assumptions –
Images comprise components that are analagous to the components of verbal language
Shared norms + practices for construction of visual images

7. Is there ‘Visual grammar’?

8. Elements of Visual Communication
Lines, colours, shapes, textures, tone
Lighting types
Focus
Perspective, depth
Composition
Long shots, medium shots, close ups
Camera/image angles

9. Study of Signs Visual images – one set of signs
Semiotics – the study of signs
Key Terminology:
Signifier - the form/structure of a sign that communicates its idea
Signified – what the signifier refers to
Signification - the link between the expression and the idea

10. Sign, Signifier, Signified
Sign = Signifier → m – a – n
word
‘man’ Signified → idea of a man
Signification: the link between the visual symbols of the written letters, combined to make a meaningful whole
AND
the concept of ‘man’ (which is part of a network, a system - e.g opposite of woman, male adult - not a child, human)

11. Example of Visual Sign Sign = Signifier → a rose man -------------
giving Signified → attraction/love
a woman
a rose

12. Differences: Verbal + Visual Signs
Verbal Signs - most are arbitrary
No necessary link between signifier + referent
E.g. D-o-g h-o-n-d i-n-j-a
Visual Signs – many non-arbitrary
i.e. often some type of visual similarity between signifier + referent
but RELATIVE non-arbitrariness

13. Continuum of Referentiality: Abstraction → Realism

14. ‘Realistic’ Signs: Issues
Many signs – more literal, more realistic than verbal signs
Can result in them seeming ‘obvious’, ‘natural’, easily accessible
Many people lack awareness of constructed nature + effects of such images
Visual Literacy: implies need for knowledge of this constructedness + understanding that ALL visual images are CODED

15. Types of Signs Iconic - looks like its referent
Indexical - points to something, leaves a trace of the referent
Symbolic – abstract
-learned association

16. Types of Meanings Denotative Connotative Literal, ‘dictionary’ meaning
E.g. Rose - shrub with thorny stems and many blooms, colours ranging from white to blood red
Connotative
Associated meanings, product of life experience
Culturally shared + individually unique
E.g. Red Rose – symbol of passion, love
Individuals? Romance? Cliché?

17. Types of Codes Sign combinations = codes Metonymic Grouping of signs
Prods reader – decode
– associations/assumptions
Meaning from cumulative
effect, clustering of signs
‘King Arthur’ by
J. M. Cameron, c. 1874

18. Types of Signs ctd Synechdoche Part Stands For Whole:
Heads stand for whole
body
Specific people stand
for ‘Madonna + Child’
‘The Holy Family’ by J.M. Cameron 1867

19. Types of Signs ctd Analogic
Something stands equally for something else
Code stimulates viewer to activate comparisons