Previous research on verbal representations shows how the news media consistently depicts young people’s uses of digital media in a narrow, negative light. In this article, we present an innovative methodology for demonstrating how young people and their digital practices are visually depicted. We focus on stock photography produced by the commercial image banks which source the news media with much of its imagery. Following an indicative analysis of news media images, we present a social semiotic analysis (grounded also in a descriptive content analysis) of a dataset of 600 stock photos top-sliced from three major image banks. By pinpointing dominant representational, compositional and interpersonal meanings, we show how image banks and, in turn, the news media produce a rather pessimistic metadiscursive framing of ‘teens and technology’. These influential visualizations are often reductionistic – consistently centering technologies over relationships; they are also problematic in, for example, their inexplicably gendered and classist assumptions.

Visualizing teens and technology: A social semiotic analysis of stock photography and news media imagery / C. Thurlow, G. Aiello, L. Portmann. - In: NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY. - ISSN 1461-4448. - 22:3(2020), pp. 528-549. [10.1177/1461444819867318]

Visualizing teens and technology: A social semiotic analysis of stock photography and news media imagery

G. Aiello
Penultimo
;
2020

Abstract

Previous research on verbal representations shows how the news media consistently depicts young people’s uses of digital media in a narrow, negative light. In this article, we present an innovative methodology for demonstrating how young people and their digital practices are visually depicted. We focus on stock photography produced by the commercial image banks which source the news media with much of its imagery. Following an indicative analysis of news media images, we present a social semiotic analysis (grounded also in a descriptive content analysis) of a dataset of 600 stock photos top-sliced from three major image banks. By pinpointing dominant representational, compositional and interpersonal meanings, we show how image banks and, in turn, the news media produce a rather pessimistic metadiscursive framing of ‘teens and technology’. These influential visualizations are often reductionistic – consistently centering technologies over relationships; they are also problematic in, for example, their inexplicably gendered and classist assumptions.
Digital media; metadiscourse; news media; social semiotics; stock photography; visual content analysis; visual/media ideologies; young people
Settore SPS/08 - Sociologia dei Processi Culturali e Comunicativi
2020
19-set-2019
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444819867318
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/1037668
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