THE CASE OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

THE CASE OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

In contradistinction to alphabetic communication which has been studied extensively by the humanities, the study of images for a long time remained the specialized domain of art history and, more recently, film theory. Moreover, social-scientific communication research may have found it difficult to characterize visual communication processes, because the categories of content analysis and survey methodology are better suited to capture the discrete, digital elements of alphabetic communication than the analog coding of images. It is, indeed, striking that research methods have not been able the match the proliferation of visual media in the contemporary media environment (see Jensen, forthcoming). Though early work on visual perception (Dember, 1964) has been carried further by psychology and some other disciplines, in communications “the systematic analysis of audiovisual languages is still at an early stage” (McQuail, 1987:202).

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Whether visual communication in fact relies on “languages” in any conventional sense is a controversial matter. Raising classic issues of epistemology, the question tends to divide studies into two camps. First, one position holds that visual communication may be easy to understand because it approximates the perceptual processes of everyday vision (Hobbs et al., 1988; Messaris, 1988). Central aspects of human perception and, by analogy, much visual communication might not be dependent upon historically or socially specific codes of comprehension, which implies certain psychological universals that correspond to the structure of reality (Piaget and Inhelder, 1948). Recent film theory, equally, has suggested a turn away from the analysis of film as language, arguing instead that reality imprints itself on film and, by projection, on the viewer’s consciousness (Deleuze, 1986; 1989). These arguments, then, support contemporary Western common sense.

The second group of researchers challenges common sense and argues, in different ways, that perception and representation are constructed actively. Whereas the most emphatic articulation of constructionism can be found in philosophical pragmatism (Bernstein, 1986; Goodman, 1978; Rorty, 1989), also the mainstream of disciplines from film studies (Bordwell, 1985; Metz, 1974) to art history (Arnheim, 1974; Gombrich, 1960) and semiotics (Eco, 1976), does assume that visual communication involves a complex process of encoding and decoding. This position is supported by historical studies of changes in the forms of representation and perception (Foster, 1988; Hauser, 1951; Lowe, 1982), showing that the reality effect of visual arts depends on the prevailing psychological schemata of specific periods.

The fundamental disagreements in current studies of visual communication re-emphasize the need for communication theory generally to examine its definition of the constituents and processes of mass communication. A major part of all mass-mediated messages, perhaps the majority, represents a hybrid of visuals and alphabetic text, ranging from feature films and television to comics and advertising. Also, the total media environment exposes the audience-public to a configuration of print and visual mass media, which are interrelated through institutional and financial arrangements as well as through genres. Conglomeration, among other things, breeds intertextuality. Visual communication, hence, provides a test case for the application of humanistic methodology

Humanistic scholarship 39

to mass communication research and an important area for further theoretical development.

Further research may depart from the three master concepts of the humanities: discourse, subjectivity, and context. Regarding discourse, one question is how the specifically visual codes affect the communicative capacity and social uses of visual media, including new hybrids of video and computer media. Visuality may enhance both the audience fascination with media content and its information value or instrumental uses, potentially but not necessarily at the same time. Moreover, while Barthes (1984a) and some later authors have suggested how text and image may be interrelated when they communicate in concert, a detailed typology of the various discourses and genres of mass communication remains to be constructed, posing

a natural task for humanistic scholarship. The discourses that will carry humanitas in the future are likely to be visual and mass-mediated more so than in the past.

Subjectivity, next, may be reconstructed in view of new forms of visual communication. Not only do the visual media provide different means of aesthetic expression than print and audio, as exemplified by some emerging forms ranging from video art to computer graphics; in the long term, visual communication, through its modes of address and the subject positions offered to audiences (Metz, 1982; Mulvey, 1989), also may entail different modes of socialization and acculturation. Part of the social impact of mass media, thus, may be attributed to certain institutionalized forms of subjectivity associated with media reception and experience, for example the focused gaze of cinema as opposed to the distracted glance of television reception (Ellis, 1982). How such forms of media reception enter into mass communication processes and effects is a question which qualitative methodologies may be particularly equipped to address.

Context, finally, is relevant for the analysis of visual communication in at least two respects. First, the institutions and technologies of visual media are especially large-scale and complex, as in the case of network television or telematics. This tends to limit the public access to and uses of such media. Simultaneously, those same video-cum-computer technologies hold the promise of decentralization and, perhaps, democratization. The question is whether the qualities of accessibility and low cost may be combined in a social form which will make the visual technologies into general cultural resources for individuals, groups, and communities (see Chapter 9 in this volume).

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Second, visual mass media may be seen to redefine, in discursive terms, their context. Television, for example, has redrawn the boundary between private and public domains, and between social reality and its representation (Meyrowitz, 1985). The constant availability of particularly visual mass communication in the modern world—in the home, the street, the workplace, and in transit—has meant the saturation of much of social time and space with cultural products. This has resulted in a qualitatively novel media environment, where the discourses of media and everyday life may become increasingly indistinguishable. If one traditional purpose of cultural practices has been the creation of a time-out from everyday life, the modern merging of mass communication with the rest of the social context may be creating an almost ceaseless time-in.