The More We Know, the More We See: The Role of Visuality in Media Literacy

Abstract

The role of visual perception in media literacy is paramount in understanding the shift from a linear perceptual process (literacy) to a holistic perceptual process (visuality) by which almost all information is now transmitted through the visual forms of mass media: television, film, and the Internet. The media-literate individual must be educated in the processes of visual perception and how the media use the visual channels to transmit, and often distort, information. The media-literate person understands the meaning of the primary axiom of visual communication - The more we know the more we see - as well as the next most important axiom: What is not seen is as important as what is seen. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

The role of visual perception in media literacy is paramount in understanding the shift from a linear perceptual process (literacy) to a holistic perceptual process (visuality) by which almost all information is now transmitted through the visualforms of mass media: television, film, and the Internet. The media-literate individual must be educated in the processes of visual perception and how the media use the visual channels to transmit, and often distort, information. The media-literate person understands the meaning of the primary axiom of visual communication-The more we know the more we see-as well as the next most important axiom: What is not seen is as important as what is seen.

Keywords: literacy; media literacy; visuality; visual literacy; intertextuality

But at some point in the second half of the twentieth century-for perhaps the first time in human history-it began to seem as if images would gain the upper hand over words.

-Stephens (1998, p. 5)

In the most generic sense, media literacy can be defined as the understanding we have about the ways in which media affect our selves, our society, and our culture.

In a more problematic sense, we are confronted by the paradox of the term media literacy. One of the most dominant elements of media, particularly the visual mass media, is that our perception of them is a holistic experience, drawing on right-brain processing to encapsulate images in a spontaneous instant of closure. On the other hand, the most dominant element of traditional literacy is that it is linear, drawing on our left-brain ability to construct meaning through language in a sequential process, creating words from letters and sentences from words. The very process of media literacy suggests a need to integrate these two disparate elements into one process that incorporates all of our perceptual abilities.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE VISUAL IMAGE

In human history, the visual image has never been more dominant than it is now. I will illustrate this point with a recent and dreadful example. On September 11, 2001, we were ushered into a world of terrible visual immediacy. For days after this tragedy, we were exposed, over and over again, to televised images of the planes crashing into the towers, the towers burning, and then the towers collapsing. I was in my car going to school and heard the news on the radio. My first act, on reaching the office, was to turn on the television and then phone my wife to turn on the television. Drivers on freeways looked for the first off-ramp to find a restaurant or service station or motel office that had a television set. If we had any doubt about the power of the visual image on civilization, that doubt was forever erased. We have moved from a world of literacy to a world of visuality. And as media literacy students and scholars, it is this new world of visuality that offers us our greatest arena of exploration.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

First, however, because my background is steeped in the literary tradition of communication, I will follow literary procedure and define a few of the terms I use in this brief article.

When I refer to literacy, I mean the nature of human education for the past 2,500 years. Whether we studied historical, philosophical, geographical, psychological, or sociological elements, we studied them through the written word-beginning with the Epic of Gilgamesh through the writings of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Capella, Dante, Burke (Edmund and Kenneth), Dewey, Freud, Watson, and Skinner, just to mention a few who have affected modern educational theories.

When I talk about visuality, I use the definition offered by Nelson (2000), who made the distinction between vision-the mechanical process of receiving visible light waves through the retina-and visuality, which is the social/ psychological process of socially constructing the meaning of our perceived visual data.

And when I use the term literate visuality, I refer to our responsibility as media literacy advocates to write and talk about our insights and discoveries concerning human visual communication-as we are doing in this journal collection.

THE MORE WE KNOW, THE MORE WE SEE

The major axiom that I use in my visual communication courses and public presentations to reflect this approach of literate visuality is The more we know, the more we see. As we learn more about the human experience, both personally and through acquired information, our visual knowledge increases. We are able to increase the meanings we can make from our visual impressions. This is what Paul Messaris (1994) labeled visual literacy, about which he offered the following four aspects: visual literacy as a prerequisite for the comprehension of visual media, general cognitive consequences of visual literacy, awareness of visual manipulation, and aesthetic appreciation (pp. 3-4). Each is explored briefly below.

Visual literacy as a prerequisite for the comprehension of visual media. Images in photographs, movies, on television, or even in painting make sense to us to the degree that we have had some real-world experiences with the objects displayed in these mediated images. Just as we do not try to walk through a mirror, we recognize mediated images as illusions of reality, not reality itself.

General cognitive consequences of visual literacy. People who study the impact of visual images on human beings have argued that exposure to these images increases the viewers' abilities to understand the real world in terms of social behaviors and even such perceptual skills as spatial accuracy and handeye coordination. The 1991 Gulf War has been nicknamed the "first digital war" largely because of our troops' ability to control both land and aerial bombardments to pinpoint accuracy-all done on computers by soldiers who grew up playing video games.

Awareness of visual manipulation. All of us have been taught and many of us are teaching about the manipulative powers of visual images-in television commercials, in political campaigns, in magazine advertisements, on billboards. A major thrust in media literacy is teaching students how to understand and be aware of how messages can be created to persuade us toward certain behaviors.

Aesthetic appreciation. Those of us who have taught or studied criticism of communicative messages know that all messages have, to some degree, an aesthetic element that is embedded in the language used to create the message. Visual languages also have aesthetic dimensions that enhance the primary message through subtexts and metamessages.

Messaris (1994) discussed visual literacy in terms of mediated images, but I think these four aspects can be applied, directly or indirectly, to most of the current research in all of the media literacy areas. Although there are some areas of visual communication that are not mediated, such as the personal relation aspects of nonverbal visual cues and the use of personal space as a territorial barrier, mediated images are the dominant form of visual information to which we are exposed.

In addition, the four aspects offered by Messaris (1994) provide both the fundamental elements of visual literacy and a grounding for my axiom, the more we know, the more we see. From my perspective, the more literate we are with words, the more literate we are visually. Also, embedded in the axiom of the more we know, the more we see is the principle of intertextuality.

INTERTEXTUALITY

I have a lot of fun with this word in my classes because it is a big word for undergraduates. I urge them to use it next time they are discussing the latest movie they have seen. Intertextuality refers to the cognitive connections we make when we see something and understand that the visual (or written) text references an earlier text (Fuery & Fuery, 2003; Phillips, 1999). In visual communication, it refers to the process where the meaning we have of one image is enhanced because of our experience with other similar images. A prime example from 9/11 is the photograph of the firefighters raising the American flag amidst the debris of the fallen Twin Towers and our immediate connection to the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II. Sturken and Cartwright (2001) suggested that intertextuality is one of the primary measures of visual literacy. Many critics think that the long-running success of the television animated series The Simpsons is due to the ability of the creators to make obvious references to previous film and television stories. The more we know, the more we see.

Although the more we know, the more we see is a major axiom that I use in my classes, I would like to offer another axiom that I think is so obvious to us as media literacy advocates that I hesitated to include it here. However, I decided that we might as well explore it briefly because although it is grounded in media literacy assumptions about sensory information, we sometimes forget it when we think about our sense of sight. This axiom is Vision, like our other senses, is subject to the same errors of perception. I also add two corollaries:

* Because our visual sense is one of our five senses, our perception of visual stimuli is not necessarily any more accurate than our other senses.

* Because our visual sense is the sense most often used in our waking lives, we mistakenly believe that our visual perception is the most accurate of our senses.

Until I went through photography school in the U.S. Air Force, I would have argued against both of these subpoints. Through the ages, we have been conditioned to believe that as long as we saw it, we could believe it. Works of literature such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey-and even The Bible-are rooted in the oral tradition of storytelling based on "original" eyewitness narratives. Christianity is based primarily on the fact that people claim they saw the risen Christ. People were burned at the stake primarily because of the visions they said they saw and that were believed by those who ordered them burned.

More recently, the convictions of several prison inmates, some of whom were on death row, were overturned because of new DNA evidence that exonerated them. In many of these cases, they had been convicted by "eyewitness" testimony. Even a recent Academy Award-winning picture, A Beautiful Mind, suggests that John Nash suffered visual delusions. However, the biography (Nasar, 1998) on which the film was based explains that his delusions were auditory. He heard voices-he did not see imaginary people. The American Psychiatric Association criticized the film because of its distortion of schizophrenic symptoms. But it is a movie and as such, primarily a visual experience.

Because our visual sense is so immediate, we may need to be reminded that just as we are taught to read and write, we are taught to "see." Our visual perception is intricately interwoven with our ability to label and describe our visual images. We all see the world in a slightly different way because we are all slightly different human beings. Just as we cannot know the first time we are touching an orange unless we have been told what it is we are touching, we do not know what we are seeing until we have learned what it is we are seeing. We all know what the color red is, but try describing it to someone who has never seen it or any other color! I know I am preaching to the choir here, but I just want to emphasize that it is important to remain cognizant of this cautionary note that our perception of visual stimuli is not necessarily any more accurate than our other senses and is subject to the same filters of perception. The recent case of Michael May ("Man's Sight Is Restored," 2003), who had his eyesight restored at the age of 49 after having been blind since the age of 3, illustrates the phenomenon of learning how to see. According to his physician, May has to relearn how to see, and it is possible that some visual images will never be clear to him because of the loss of some capabilities in the brain to process certain visual signals.

THE SHIFT FROM LITERACY TO VISUALITY

I have already suggested that we are moving from a world of literacy to a world of visuality. This shift certainly did not happen overnight. It was predicted by Marshall McLuhan (1964) when he created the enduring phrase "The medium is the message."

Stephens (1998) explained this transition when he described events beginning with the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963:

Perhaps it was John F. Kennedy's handsome face or the opportunity most Americans had to watch his funeral. Maybe the turning point came with the burning huts of Vietnam, the flags and balloons of the Reagan presidency or Madonna's writhings on MTV. But at some point in the second half of the twentieth centuryfor perhaps the first time in human history-it began to seem as if images would gain the upper hand over words, (p. 5)

We could also point out that these events were closely followed by the introduction, in 1980, of USA Today, a national newspaper that liberally splashed its pages with color photographs at the expense of extensive, written journalistic analyses. Within a few years, almost all major newspapers were following this format change. Pictures replaced in-depth literary reporting.

For several years, scholars of popular culture have looked at the messages and subtexts of popular films and television shows. The study of nonverbal behavior, which focuses mostly on visual cues, has been a significant area of research in several disciplines for some time. Recently, several academic disciplines have examined the visual aspects of messages and implications of the visual forms we encounter in our interacting lives. A few scholars (e.g., Blair, Jeppeson, & Pucci, 1991) have studied the rhetorical implications of memorial statues and other visual artifacts.

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Although several academic fields now include visual communication as part of their scope of studies, visual imagery has been aprimary form of communication since the beginning of recorded history. The small carved statue of the Venus of Willendorf and the paintings of Chauvet cave, identified as being as old as 30,000 B.C.E., give evidence of humans' desire to visually express their experiences. The preliterate evidence continues with designs on pottery and carved artifacts that apparently had primarily an aesthetic value. As we move through literate history, we find many more examples of the significance of visual artifacts: the decorated objects from the Egyptian tombs, the decorated columns of Greek and Roman architecture, informational monuments such as the Column of Trajan in Rome and the Arch of Triumph in Paris (modeled after the Arch of Constantine in Rome). The invention of photography in the 19th century created a foundation for a significant increase in the availability of "accurate" visual information.

Many 20th-century developments can be connected to discoveries that increased our attention to visual images:

* X-rays made internal body parts visible to the naked eye.

* Einstein's general theory of relativity used light as its foundation.

* Moving pictures became a major form of entertainment.

* Radar made invisible energy waves visible to the naked eye.

* The first television transmission occurred.

* Photographs were sent instantaneously by wirephoto.

* Freudian psychology influenced many artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador DaIí, and Jackson Pollock, who created images generally classified as abstract art.

* The onset of transcontinental television broadcasts signaled the true beginning of the "visual age."

* VCRs, DVDs, TiVo, personal computers, the Internet, digital imaging, and home satellites became household "necessities."

* Computer-generated images became common in film and television.

If we had any doubts before 9/11 that we are in a world of incredible visual immediacy, after that date we should have no doubt at all. In addition, in 2003, we had instantaneous visual coverage of the war (invasion, conquest, liberation) in Iraq in real time-although those first ghostly images and green shapeshifters glaring at us through night vision lenses seemed to be out of The X-Files rather than the news media.

I have one final axiom that is crucial to this idea that we are at a stage of visual immediacy in this world that we have never before known. Let me preview that axiom with a few examples. The entire world watched, at the same time, the collapse of the Twin Towers. The 2004 Super Bowl was seen simultaneously by almost 2 billion people around the world, and the 2004 Academy Awards telecast was watched by more than 1 billion people worldwide. The 2003 war in Iraq was transmitted continuously 24/7 in every country that had people with television receivers. However, in every one of those countries, what they saw was different-depending on the particular political/cultural perspective of the leaders and how much power they exerted over their media and populations. All of these examples lead me to the final major axiom of visual communication that I want to share with you: What is not seen is as important as what is seen.

WHAT IS NOT SEEN IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT IS SEEN

The idea of being aware of what is not seen has been an important element for years in media criticism. McKerrow (1989), in describing a critical rhetoric approach, offered the following principle: "Absence is as important as presence in understanding and evaluating symbolic action" (p. 107). Here in the United States, we were not able to see certain images of the recent Iraqi war. We had to assiduously search many different media sources to see pictures of our own dead soldiers or pictures of the caskets with our dead soldiers' remains being returned to Dover Air Force Base. We were not shown many pictures of our own wounded in great pain. In fact, until the Coalition forces finally destroyed the transmitters of Al Jazeera, it was Al Jazeera's transmissions of our wounded and captured soldiers that were seen by most of the rest of the world. The April 7, 2003, issue of Newsweek (Alter, 2003) offered an in-depth analysis about how people in different parts of the world saw the war and how our own government and "news" stations edited the pictures. It was also clear that many citizens of Iraq never saw, on their televisions, the rapidly advancing Coalition forces that were liberally shown on American television nightly news.

Of course, we had the overwhelming coverage of "Saving Private Lynch." These pictures were carefully edited first by the Pentagon and then by our media to give viewers in the United States an image of our fighting forces that was positive and uplifting. Although the presence of the embedded journalists gave us some immediate access to the ongoing war images, we should not be deluded that we saw all the photographic and video images that were taken. In a November 23, 2003, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) broadcast (Bristow, Kelly, & Arrowsmith, 2003), which was not seen in the United States except for those few persons who could receive CBC, several images were shown that had been either censored or severely edited by the U.S. government before the related footage was made available to U.S. media outlets.

Even as I finish writing this essay, March 31, 2004, images of four American civilian security guards who were killed in Fallujah, Iraq, and whose bodies were mutilated, dragged, and burned, have been displayed on television and the Internet but not without a great deal of concern by the stations who chose to show some of the video of the burned and charred bodies. What is certain is that we did not see all of the video that had been taken of the event. Some media persons made decisions about what they were going to let us see.

What is not seen is as important as what is seen is a crucial axiom we need to remember every time we see images on television, in magazines, in newspapers, and on the Internet. The additional presence of digital technology creates another barrier for us. Not only must we ask What are they not showing us? but also What, if anything, have they done to alter or manipulate the images they are showing us?

CONCLUSION

I would like to end by turning to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Jacob Bronowski's (1973) reminder that no knowledge is complete, and that to ever assume that we have the ultimate answer is to lead to tragedy. His tragedy was the many members of his family who perished in the Nazi holocaust and ours is September 11, 2001. Both events were caused by people who believed that they had some ultimate knowledge about the human condition. And as we have yet to find out, the drama of the aftermath of 9/11 is still unfolding, as are the many unresolved questions about what Time magazine labeled "Gulf War II" on the cover of its March 31, 2003, issue. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle reminds us that visual accuracy is never fully attained nor is it ever absolutely accurate. We must know all of our own personal filters and biases that we bring to any observable event, including mediated visual images. We have to treat all information with a certain degree of skepticism and caution, particularly regarding the source. Unlike my beginning academic career, when I had to search for sufficient information, our challenge today is to guide our students as they sort through the infinite information available to them and discover which is credible and accurate as well as search for what they have not been allowed to read or see. The more we know, the more we see is the cornerstone of literate visuality and media literacy.

References

ADDITIONAL SOURCES FOR READING IN VISION AND VISUALITY

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REFERENCES

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McKerrow, R. E. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication Monographs, 56,91-111.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: Signet Books.

Messaris, P. (1994). Visual literacy: Image, mind, and reality. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Nasar, S. (1998). A beautiful mind: The life of mathematical genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. New York: Touchstone.

Nelson, R. S. (2000). Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Phillips, W. H. (1999). Film: An introduction. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Stephens, M. (1998). The rise of the image, the fall of the word. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press.