Anchorage

I have touched on already the manipulation of an image to convey a meaning or mood a little before, but having just read up on Roland Barthes Rhetoric of the image it re-enforced and added greatly to what I was aiming for before.

I noted that Anchorage plays quite an important part role in today's society, weaving its self through newspapers, news reports and advertising. The basics are, adding a caption, word or line of text to show meaning. Its a simple trick, but once text has been implemented to an image, it is hard to unconnect the forced meaning.

I searched through this months front pages of the main newspapers/tabloids to find examples of where one image has been laced with different meaning and came across a recent example.

Daily mail has a clear message, where as...

the Scotsman disagrees, and ..

the mirror goes for the sensational.

So the same image is shown three times, and each has a different way of shaping opinion. I personally don't read any newspapers any more because I don't want to have my opinion shaped by anyone.

News papers are not the only ones to sensationalise events. I discussed in one of the seminar how moving images can be used totally out of context to make a completely different story. I'm a big fan of Charlie Brooker's views on TV and the media and below is a clip showing media coverage of the Haiti earthquake back in 2010. Around 2mins 30 he explains how disconnection between the footage and the narration is the main cause of misunderstanding the context of the actual story.

So this post may have turned into a bit of a rant, but I like to form my own ideas and thoughts on issues, take up some time to analyse all points of view then arrive at a decision. I do understand why and how anchorage is used but it is something I disagree with if using it with intent to create falsehoods. The image is innocent in all of this, just a re-interperation of an event that happened, although as said before in this age you have to question everything, research, and not take the 'hollywood' mode of history where things are shown more for the sensational effect rather than factual.