Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: V isual media is everywhere.Images, still and moving, have spread across the globe on the wings of new technologies.They bombard us wherever we go, in restaurants, airports, museums, shopping malls, sports arenas, and even in gas stations, no less than at home and in the workplace.Even if we wished, we cannot avoid exposure.The sheer number of new images produced and communicated is astonishing.YouTube now ingests 20 hours of new video every minute. 1 Its site reaches more than 18 percent of the global Internet audience; by comparison, The New York Times site reaches less than one percent.2 The photo-sharing site Photobucket contains seven billion images and receives 130 billion searches per month, or more than 50,000 searches per second, yet it is playing catchup to Facebook, which boasts 15 billion images and 300,000 accesses per second.3 In addition, cable and satellite television providers have added hundreds of new channels, multiplying content while simultaneously increasing and fragmenting the global television audience.Such statistics reveal two important trends.Many more images than ever before are available, and many more people are paying a disproportionate amount of attention to them.Quite literally, billions of human beings are seeing the world differently.The wholesale transformation of the media information landscape during the last decade in fact represents the triumph of the image over the printed word.Today, images frame the discussion of those issues that most deeply stir public opinion.Photos of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib arguably caused greater damage to the US cause in Iraq than any defeat on the battlefield.In June 2009, the legitimacy of the Iranian regime was called into question by mobile phone videos showing the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman shot by a government sniper in the streets of Tehran.The imagery sur-
Authors: Martin Gurri, Craig Denny, Aaron Harms
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2992117396