Introduction to Visual Media

Visual media is defined as a platform in which ideas and information are conveyed by the use of visual elements which involve but are not limited to drawing, illustration, graphic design, animation, signs, electronic resources, advertising, industrial design, and typography. Before going deeper into visual media, we have to look at visual communication and understand what it entails. Visual communication can therefore be defined as the process by which information is conveyed by the use of graphics to come up with effective meaning. Visual communication can be used in trade shows, conferences, social media posts, office presentations and meetings, and in other situations. That is why, for content marketing to be successful in the recent era, it has to include visual communication. Hence, visual media can therefore be observed on smartphones, billboards, screen projectors, newspapers, computers, televisions, and various other devices and mediums. The main advantage of visual media is that it helps readers to clarify and understand information by having the ability to create their perception about the content and hence limit misinterpretation.

How Has Visual Media Come into Play?

In recent, visual media tends to play a great role in our daily lives in such a way we can't operate without it and more so to adolescents. Visual media has affected my life positively and negatively at the same time. On the positive side, it has helped me to improve my social interaction behaviors and decrease the negative behaviors through gaining social skills while interacting with them. It has also helped me to develop positive friendship character traits and qualities, and important companionship by using it with friends (Marengo, Longobardi, Fabris & Settanni, 2018). Last but not least, visual media has also helped me to develop spatial skills, boost my communication skills, promote self-esteem and self-confidence. Although visual media has helped me much, it has also affected my life negatively at some point. The exposure to violent visual media has increased my aggressiveness, attention problems, externalizing trait and has also decreased my prosocial behavior in which I have that desire to benefit individuals rather than doing actions that benefit others and have that sense of personal responsibility.

Does Visual Media Encourage the Idea of Transforming the Behavior of Its Users?

Yes. I agree that visual media encourages the idea of changing the behavior of its users since the world we see on this platform is not a true and real world. The main concern here is that we try to sink deep into the virtual world losing the sense of who we are, the real world, and real priorities. This affects people so much as it distracts them from their real lives making them forget who they are and at times, making them not work on their issues due to that involvement in the reality they have created for themselves (Weinstein, 2018). Therefore, let us look at it in detail basing our argument on sexuality, age, gender, race, power, ethnicity, and disability.

• Sexuality-Television has emerged as the leading sex educator in the world today. Adult sexual behaviors are being exposed to children by television in ways that try to show these actions are quite normal and risk-free thus passing information that, since these behaviors are frequent, everybody does it (Waldron, 2016). Hence, we get that teenagers rank media as the leading sex educator. Therefore, sensitive study documents in the media, influence their sexual attitudes, beliefs, and values.
• Age-Visual media has been found widely and possibly harmful in affecting health-related behaviors of teenagers and children, most of whom are not mature enough to differentiate fantasy from reality especially where it is revealed as 'real life. Therefore, children who carefully observe others exhibiting certain aggressive behavior, are more likely to carry out the same aggressive behavior immediately.
• Gender- In recent, we will agree together that the number of women in the visual media has been increasing globally, although top positions remain dominated by males. This disparity is very evident in Africa, whereby cultural obstructions to women remain. Therefore, the presence of women in the visual media is more likely to create positive implications for women and girls thus, developing confidence in women as interviewees and sources, and attracting a female audience.
• Race and ethnicity- In most cases, we expect crime reporting to be ethnically neutral in terms of content but in the visual media, there remains content that is salient to the address of racial issues, either voluntarily or not, and either in an encouraging or derogatory manner. This situation can be termed as ethnic emphasis which in return affects the method in which visual media influences the perceptions of social issues of its audience.

Bottom line

In general, the introduction of visual media has positive and negative impacts on the issues of sexuality, gender, age, race, ethnicity, power, class, and disability. The social build-up of disability is identified as an obstruction to social inclusion hence the theory of social build-up or construction tries to come up with an explanation to explain the process through which knowledge is developed and assumed as reality. Therefore, I can advocate for teenagers to use visual media to build themselves rather than destroy themselves. Also, I can advise parents to be keen on how their children interact with visual media. 

 

 

References

Marengo, D., Longobardi, C., Fabris, M., & Settanni, M. (2018). Highly-visual social media and internalizing symptoms in adolescence: The mediating role of body image concerns. Computers in Human Behavior, 82, 63-69. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.01.003

Waldron, E. L. (2016). "This FEELS SO REAL!" Sense and sexuality in ASMR videos. First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v22i1.7282

Weinstein, E. (2018). The social media see-saw: Positive and negative influences on adolescents' affective well-being. New Media & Society, 20(10), 3597-3623. doi:10.1177/1461444818755634