WRITING < posted May 16, 2002>

Thesis Abstract

News delivery in this country is increasingly comprised of carefully crafted displays of visual information. As consumers of information, however, most of us have never been taught to critically read or decode images and other graphic displays of information in the same ways that we have been taught to analyze verbal communication. We are taught reading comprehension and writing skills throughout most of our educational experience, but not visual language comprehension. Yet, if we wish to remain critical viewers of the news media in the midst of this image-driven, converging media landscape, we must develop equally sophisticated visual literacy skills. I believe that bringing together the work of multiple disciplines including communications, media studies and communication design is key to addressing this problem. At the intersection of those fields, there is a rich body of work that seeks to understand and analyze the power, the practices, and the techniques employed by the news media in presenting visual information. By taking advantage of work done in these related discourses, new methods of promoting visual literacy can be derived. This thesis builds on elements from each of those disciplines in order to create a prototype for the critical analysis of visual news content utilizing the tools of interactive visual design.

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