Visual Literacy and image events

Deluca (Making Waves) makes sense, in that he criticizes authors for being neglectful of rhetorical analysis of images. “We must recognize that the conversation of the culture is centered not in the New York Review of Books but in the television experience.” He goes to explain that in this new media environment we need to a new framework to analyze the completeness of the television. At the time he wrote the article visual analysis was still being viewed through a prism of print.

The intellectual dissection of television and film isn’t comfortable to most people and particularly so at the time the articles were written. The general population didn't have the framework to do it. They were still thinking about the print medium as the medium suitable for analysis. I think it’s an easier medium for analysis, the purpose of print is a straightforward clarity, and that isn’t the case for film/television.

It may be easier to make the case in the future.  The digital revolution has transformed the average person from a media consumer into a media producer and gives them a better concept of creation and the intellectual framework for media analysis. An average person today takes 1000 times more photos and video than they would have twenty years ago and there is a similar increase in participation in digital design and layout. Its bringing visual literacy to unprecedented levels in our society, and especially in the instances of “image events.” So maybe our experience as content creators reduces some of the passive visual experiences and makes visual literacy as important in society today as written literacy was in the past.