1. Media Literacy & Rhetorical Analysis
Traditional categories:
Audience
Context
Purpose
Genre
Rhetorical strategies
Arrangement, style, delivery
Claim, warrant, evidence, rebuttal
ethos, pathos, logos
Assumptions, implications, counterexamples
Metaphor and tropes
Etc.

2. Audience Is there an “ideal” audience? An “implied” audience?
How do images position the audience?
What role/position do they invite us to adopt?
How do they create particular “gazes,” spaces for identification, particular points of view? Are we invited to be spectator, voyeur, participant?
We can ask: what gender, race, class etc. does an image invite the audience to identify with?

3. Point of view (and other rhetorical strategies)
This can include such elements as:
Framing
Distance from the subject (is the image a close-up, medium shot or long shot, and how is this used to suggest importance, relationships, etc?)
Point of view (“Eyes the prize”; how does the author position herself?) A low angle shot tends to make the subject look powerful, whereas a high angle shot can reduce the size/importance of the subject
Foregrounding/backgrounding
Selection
Use of visual tropes
Arrangement of elements
Juxtaposition of images – what relationships are inferred?

4. The gaze
In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey argues for the concept of a “male gaze.” The audience is “required” to see the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Mulvey argues that the male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects. The female viewer experiences the text secondarily, by identification with the male.
Mulvey’s work has been highly influential, although it has also been criticized and reworked significantly, particularly from scholars doing audience analysis, reception studies and anthropological work.

7. What do you notice about these movie posters from the 1950s?

8. HORROR movie posters in the 1950s regularly focus on a scene of attack, with a woman in peril. The posters put the viewers in the position where they are asked to take action and to imagine themselves doing something to save the woman. THE main scene in each poster spills over the edge of the poster, making it seem as if we, the audience, are there in the frame – we are incited to act. For example, in the creature from black lagoon poster, the rescuers are far away – “we” are closer. Conversely, women always are always victims and powerless. If they have any power, this is demonized.

10. HORROR movie posters in the 1950s regularly focus on a scene of attack, with a woman in peril. The posters put the viewers in the position where they are asked to take action and to imagine themselves doing something to save the woman. The main scene in each poster spills over the edge of the poster, making it seem as if we, the audience, are there in the frame – we are incited to act. For example, in the creature from black lagoon poster, the rescuers are far away – “we” are closer. Conversely, women always are always victims and powerless. If they have any power, this is demonized.

11. Fear of a visual planet?
Concern about centrality of the visual (Postman, “peekaboo world” infantilizes and confuses; television and the “dumbing down” of America)
Argument by association – sidesteps reasoning but has impact in our frantic, fragmented, image filled world? (Cf Tufte’s famous “The cognitive style of powerpoint”)
Echoes concerns about oral culture, which also tends to work by association and juxtaposition
Digital media is shifting dramatically to the visual. Do we need a new media literacy?
Do we need to re-imagine composition so that visual more important?

12. When ads used a lot of logos

13. Today’s ads often use different appeals

14. ARGUMENT BY ASSOCIATION
With the predominance of the visual, do we move to the era of “persuasion by association,” or “one of these things is a bit like the other one”?
PERHAPS works by enthymeme, inference, implication, or abduction?

15. Visual Argument
Argument by association (analogy?)

16. Images & Cultural/Rhetorical Analysis
What information do images provide us about culture?
How can we use images to engage in rhetorical and cultural analysis?

17. Media studies & effects
Example: Gerbner’s “Cultivation theory” attempts to understand how "heavy exposure to cultural imagery will shape a viewer's concept of reality“
Gerbner’s work points to large scale patterns in movies, advertisements, television and other forms of popular entertainment.

18. 1. Patterns
Masculine ideals in the 1980s

19. Shifting ideals for men
Masculine ideals in the 2000s

20. Ken: 1950 vs 1988

21. Changing beauty standards
In 1957, Miss America was 5'7" and weighed 150 pounds.
In 2002 Miss America was:
5'9''
117 pounds

23. Reading the (visual) patterns
Goffman: the positioning of bodies suggests social roles for the genders. A person's behavior and appearance can be expressive and symbolic, communicating to observers their social identity, their inner states and feelings, their intentions and expectations, and the nature of their relationships with others. 
Goffman observes that in every culture symbolic codes are developed  which express idealized social identities and relationships. Images of women and men together in the media often draw on these codes.

24. Women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benign-ness of the surround...Floors also are associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of a room-for example, the place to keep dogs" (p. 41)

25. What patterns can you identify?
Women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benignness of the surround...Floors also are associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of a room-for example, the place to keep dogs" (p. 41)

26. RECLINING NUDES
(top left) Giorgione, (top right) Titian, (above) Goya, (left) film still, Titanic.

27. Most nudes depicted in art are female
Most nudes depicted in art are female. A fairly small number of nudes are male. What are some of the differences in the way male and female nudity is represented?

29. What patterns can you identify?
Goffman also points out that women are often posed bending their heads or bodies at an angle, I.e., "cant." The effect of cant, he says, is that the "level of the head is lowered relative to that of others, including, indirectly, the viewer of the picture. The resulting configurations can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of integration, submissiveness, and appeasement." (p. 46)

30. Goffman argues that women are often posed bending their heads or bodies at an angle, or "cant." The effect of cant, he says, is that the "level of the head is lowered relative to that of others, including, indirectly, the viewer of the picture. The resulting configurations can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of integration, submissiveness, and appeasement." (p. 46)

31. What do gesture & bodily arrangement communicate?
Cant is often combined with putting a finger in the mouth or otherwise touching the face in a childlike way.

32. MALE GAZE

33. Reversing roles
Why does it strike us as odd, bizarre or humorous when roles are reversed?
What does this tell us about the cultural construction of gender – of the qualities are associated with images of masculinity and femininity and the accepted boundaries between them?

35. Why should it seem funny to see a picture of adult men striking a pose when the same pose seems normal or charming to us in pictures of adult women?

38. It's not based in actual behavior
It's not based in actual behavior. In ordinary life, neither adult men nor adult women commonly strike poses like those we see regularly in fashion magazines.

39. Yet for some reason, to those of us in Western cultures, it seems normal to display pictures of women striking poses that would seem funny or strange when struck by men. Erving Goffman's study called “Gender Advertisements” is useful here because he focused on, among other things, poses common to magazine advertisements. "Commercial photographs," Goffman points out, "involve carefully performed poses presented in the style of being 'only natural'." (84)

41. According to Kilbourne, women are more often shown “dismembered” (just parts of their bodies shown), associated with products, shown as smaller than a man, engaged in various forms of ritualized subordination, prostrate or recumbent, bent or leaning back, infantilized (with finger coyly in their mouth, standing pigeon-toed, wearing little girl clothes, sucking on lollipops, etc.), looking dreamy and introverted, overcome with emotions, or symbolically silenced with hand over the mouth.

42. The Cultural indicators project (Gerbner & cultivation theory)
Gerbner dean of communications at the Annenberg School of Communications
Cultivation theory attempts to understand how "heavy exposure to cultural imagery will shape a viewer's concept of reality“
Gerbner’s work points to large scale patterns in movies, advertisements, television and other forms of popular entertainment.

43. Denouncing the Celluloid Ceiling
Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in the Top 250 Films of 2004
Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., School of Communication, San Diego State University,
San Diego, CA 92182,
 Over the last four years, the percentage of women working as directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors on the top 250 domestic grossing films has declined from 19% in 2001 to 16% in 2004.
 Women comprised only 5% of directors in 2004.  This represents a decline of 6 percentage points since 2000 when women accounted for 11% of all directors.  In other words, in 2004 the percentage of women directors was slightly less than half the percentage in 2000.
See “Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in the Top 250 Films of 2004”
Martha M. Lauzen, School of Communication, San Diego State University

47. Image search – companies use it to figure out brand use and trends
Image search – companies use it to figure out brand use and trends. We need tools that let us be informed citizens – more than just consumers.
You can analyze patterns more easily with new media.

48. Photo-sharing sites are scanned to find brands, target ads, identify trends and marketing opportunities*
If you use Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest etc. and images are shared publicly, then digital marketing companies will search, scan, store and repurpose them in their work for big-brand advertisers.
Smile! Marketing Firms Are Mining Your Selfies.

49. Research is emerging that uses/revises media literacy work and applies to the digital landscape.
Many new opportunities for research, many new forms of data, and many new research questions.
“Gamergate” points to some of the potential (and risks).

52. Visual Tropes

53. Metaphor
Metaphor: works by comparing things that are not literally alike
"put that file on the desktop", "he is a beast"
“He cracked up”, “I am a little rusty today”, “The BLT is a lousy tipper”
(Key reference: “”Metaphors We Live By”, by G.Lakoff, M. Johnson)
All figures of speech which use association, comparison, or resemblance can generally be called types of metaphor, or metaphorical.

54. Drink “provokes the desire but takes away the performance
Drink “provokes the desire but takes away the performance.” William Shakespeare

55. Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration or overstatement, often for dramatic or humorous effect
Litotes is the opposite – dramatic understatement
Personification – Tony the tiger, Yogi bear, much kids advertising

56. Willie Wiredhand, the  mascot of the American rural electric movement.

57. Analogy

59. Critical Visual Literacy?

60. “The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text
that turn the images from one thing into another.”

62. There are five common ways images act/are acted upon in political struggle and in strategic communication
Image manipulation (e.g. Photoshopping)
False captioning (real image/misleading caption)
Image destruction (erasure, electronic or physical)
Image reversal (using recognizable elements of well-known images for other, often opposed, messaging; overwriting; marking that changes the message or impact, like writing "murderer" over the image of a politician running for office)
Image staging (like the infamous toppling of the status of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, staged by a US Psyops unit for the media

64. Iranian missile photos spawn a photoshop contest

67. Five years ago, Baghdad fell to forces led by the US
Five years ago, Baghdad fell to forces led by the US. But as an oft-forgotten  L.A. Times report, the crystallizing moment — when a statue of Saddam Hussein came down in Baghdad — was not the spontaneous event it appeared to be.

70. Political economy
Political and economic systems of the society in which the media operate
Relationship between economics, politics and dominant cultural and social values
Factors often looked at: 1) size and ownership of the mass media 2)advertising as the primary income source of the mass media. 3) The dependence of the media on information provided by government, business and experts funded and approved by these primary sources. 4) ‘Flak’ as a means of disciplining the media (c.f. head of CNN interview with Bill Moyers after Iraq war, wrt coverage and images of civilian dead.) 5) how powerful economic interests lobby for/shape regulation of media, standards, and technology policy.

71. “Flak”: CNN after 9-11
BILL MOYERS interviews Walter Isaacson, CEO of CNN WHEN AMERICAN FORCES WENT AFTER THE TERRORIST BASES IN AFGHANISTAN, NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS REPORTED THE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.
WALTER ISAACSON: We'd put it on the air and by nature of a 24-hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.
BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?
WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, "You're being anti-American here."
BILL MOYERS: SO ISAACSON SENT HIS STAFF A MEMO, LEAKED TO THE WASHINGTON POST: "IT SEEMS PERVERSE" HE SAID, "TO FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE CASUALTIES OR HARDSHIP IN AFGHANISTAN."
WALTER ISAACSON: I felt if we put into context, we could alleviate the pressure of people saying, "Don't even show what's happening in Afghanistan."
BILL MOYERS: NEWSPAPERS WERE SQUEEZED, TOO. THIS ONE IN FLORIDA TOLD ITS EDITORS, "DO NOT USE PHOTOS ON PAGE 1A SHOWING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES... OUR SISTER PAPER ...HAS DONE SO AND RECEIVED HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF THREATENING S ..."
AND THEN THERE WAS FOX NEWS: WHOSE CHIEF EXECUTIVE - THE VETERAN REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE AND MEDIA STRATEGIST ROGER AILES - HAD PRIVATELY URGED THE WHITE HOUSE TO USE THE HARSHEST MEASURES POSSIBLE AFTER 9/11...
WALTER ISSACSON: ... so we were caught between this patriotic fervor and a competitor who was using that to their advantage; they were pushing the fact that CNN was too liberal that we were sort of vaguely anti-American.

72. General Electric
AT&T/Liberty Media
Disney
Time Warner
Sony
News Corporation
Viacom
Seagram
Bertelsmann
Not independent of each other: AT&T has stakes in Time Warner and News Corporation. AT&T and General Electric both have stakes in CNBC. News Corporation has at least one joint venture with each of the other seven.

73. Geo-political economic aspects to media “There is a simple rule of thumb: the strongest media groups have their home base in those media markets which are not only the largest in their category, but also the richest.” Understanding global news: a critical introduction

74. “What has happened is that young people no longer see a need to keep up with the news….America is facing the greatest exodus of informed citizenry in its history.” (Brown, p. 7).

75. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive
Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.
Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years.
Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. The average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising. As of 2004, newspapers were least preferred source for news amongst young.

76. Biases about the centrality of the visual (Postman, the “peekaboo world” infantalizes and confuses; television and the “dumbing down” of America; Idiocracy)
Argument by association – sidesteps reasoning but has a big impact in our frantic, fragmented, image filled world?
This is part of the famous argument advanced by Tufte in “The cognitive style of powerpoint”

77. Consider War posters

78. War poster in fascist Italy (WWII)
War posters are interesting as they distill myths, symbols and narratives of national identity with particular persuasive intensity.
They also represent “others,” playing off various cultural and racial stereotypes
Poster produced in Italy during WWII vilifying
American troops & exhorting Italians to resist
American troops

83. WHAT IS INTERESTING IS THE FACT THAT POOR WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOR HAD ALWAYS WORKED FACTORY JOBS, SO THE CHALLENGE RHETORICALLY IS TO CONSTRUCT A SPACE FOR MIDDLE CLASS WOMEN.

86. Mom’s Rising – a fascinating netroots/activist group that draws on tropes from WWII recruitment posters to push for various progressive changes in policy