Visual Communication. Janis Teruggi Page

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СКАЧАТЬ gap between absolutist and consequentialist views of ethics, offering a pluralistic viewpoint (Figure 2.2). Ross (1930/2002) argued that we often are faced with competing values as we consider ethical questions. He provides moral guidelines that he calls prima facie duties. The term prima facie literally means “on its face” (at first glance) in Latin and refers to the concept that certain duties and obligations come first unless other contingencies or issues come up.

      Ross lays out these duties in his book, The Right and the Good (1930/2002):

       Fidelity: the need to keep promises and avoid lying and deception.

       Reparation: the requirement to ameliorate or “fix” actions we may have made that were wrong and injured others.

       Gratitude: the duty to be thankful for others' good acts and to act positively in return.

       Non‐injury and harm‐prevention: the responsibility to avoid hurting other people and to forestall harm where possible.

       Beneficence: the duty to do our best toward others, recognizing that in doing good toward others and holding that there are people in the world “whose condition we can make better in respect of virtue, or of intelligence, or of pleasure.”Figure 2.2 Ross’s seven prima facie duties (pluralism ethics) “At first glance.”Source: © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

       Self‐improvement: a responsibility to ourselves to foster our own well‐being, health, and safety.

       Justice: the duty to behave in ways that ensure happiness and pleasure are distributed fairly among all people. (Ross, p. 21–22).

      One way to understand Ross's ethics theory and the role of contingencies is to consider the analogy of a card game. When you look at a newly dealt hand, at first glance you might think that you will win in a “top card wins” game because you have an ace. However, you might end up losing if another player has a trump card. This can be any card in the deck, but the players have determined beforehand that this card will beat, or trump, any other card, even the ace.

      Now consider Ross's ideas on a person's moral duties. Most situations will involve more than one duty. Often, they will conflict, causing you to deliberate which one to follow within a specific situation. While this seems confusing, using personal moral judgment to weigh decisions based on the context of a given situation can be more useful than being bound by clear‐cut rules and answers. Can you think of a situation involving visual communication that you would decide by weighing Ross's seven duties? Consider what content you'd use to cover a fast‐moving news event like a salmonella outbreak, or what images you'd use in a fund‐raising campaign to fight childhood malnutrition.

VISUAL DECEPTION

      LO2 Identify the ethical dimensions of visual manipulation, framing, appropriation, and intellectual property.

      Photographers have altered their images long before digital picture taking and Photoshop. Search for “digitally manipulated photos” and you'll find multiple sources that document and illustrate doctored pictures stretching back to the 1800s. In professional situations, ethical issues still arise as modern media organizations make decisions about how to portray male and female politicians and celebrities.

      To Tell the Truth … or Not

      During the 2008 US presidential election, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story on vice presidential candidate Sara Palin featuring a closely cropped photo and following its longstanding policy of not retouching photos (Baird, 2016). The photo caused an uproar because critics said it was cruel, revealing wrinkles and some facial hair. Photographers for Newsweek said they had set up for a male candidate, not a female candidate thus using stronger, and some would say harsher, lighting for the shoot. The managing editor commented that Newsweek used unretouched photos of men on a regular basis. As Baird (2016) wrote, “Newsweek was accused of sexism because we did not (original emphasis) airbrush the photo. The truth was, we'd portrayed Ms. Palin just the way we did male candidates.” This incident points out how expectations of women's appearances are far different from men's, and people apply different and gender‐based ethical judgments.

       Figure 2.3 Intentionally cropped photo of President Trump’s 2017 inauguration day photo.

       Source: Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images.

Nearly a decade later, President Trump instructed the National Park Service to remove empty space and make the audience look larger in his 2017 inauguration day photo posted to social media (Figure 2.3). A government photographer admitted to investigators that he intentionally cropped photos to fit the statement of Trump's then‐press secretary Sean Spicer, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period” (CNN, 2018).

      Visual Manipulation Issues

      Technology allows people to easily create visual memes from their own photos or others' images and share them on social media. For example, when Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews interviewed star NFL player Richard Sherman after a close‐fought game, Sherman shouted that he was the best corner in the game, launching scores of memes that called on visual popular culture. The memes, mashups of Sherman photos and images of the Incredible Hulk, an alien, and a bully, tended to characterize Sherman as a scary and frightening individual (Figure 2.4), possibly even threatening to Andrews (Page et al., 2016).

Professionally, from retouched photos in fashion spreads and ads to digital effects in video and motion pictures, enhanced images are part of our daily media consumption. They're not all without harm. Depictions of thin, attractive female models and celebrities in movies, on television, and in advertising have been shown to lead young women to have unreasonable expectations about their own bodies and to undermine their self‐ confidence: a negative consequence of seeing those images (Gleeson and Frith, 2006). A magazine retoucher for Vogue magazine reported altering 144 pictures in the magazine for fashion articles and for advertising (Orbach, 2011). Some critics might argue that the images thus are not authentic and represent a false “reality” to readers of the magazine. Others might argue that everyone knows that such images are carefully posed, chosen, and fine‐tuned to present clothing and other products in the most appealing fashion.

       Figure 2.4 Meme depicting Richard Sherman as The Predator film character.

       Source: Athletize.

      FOCUS: Digital Manipulation

      Photo manipulation is a contentious area in journalism, advertising, and other forms of strategic communication. From almost the beginning of photography, it became possible to manipulate, edit, alter, and combine images, thus changing their meanings in subtle or blatant ways. Celebrated US Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady, made a portrait of General William Tecumseh Sherman's top officers – but later added a missing officer who Brady evidently СКАЧАТЬ