A Comparative Study of Iconicity in Print and Digital Media

Within the age of digital news and social media, the current study purports to study iconicity across time to understand if there is a difference between identification of iconic imagery when comparing a prompt of commonly used elite media images to an unprompted response in an effort to ascertain which images are, in fact, considered most iconic in the minds of audience (661).

The main agenda of images evoking human emotion and establishing a connection to the human experience incoming to represent a significant event has remained constant over the years (661).

The role of gatekeeping has changed, and now the elite media determine which news topics are newsworthy, the same case to photographs where the elite media select and allow which are iconic (661).

Key Terms

1. Iconic Images: These are photographs that can be influential and memorable to a person regarding a certain event or occurrence.

2. Elite media: This is the traditional way or space of journalistic reporting which included newspapers images and television where they are able to control the content they put out.

3. Digital and Social Media: This is the new technological way of passing information where a pool of headlines and galleries of photos characterize it. Here, news images are no longer fixed like they were in print.

4. Visual Consciousness:  It is the aliveness and the emotional connection towards an image that has the potential of being an iconic image.

Question and Critique

While iconicity depends on the pre-existing schema, previous knowledge and experience (661), and with the power of a single image diminishing (675), is the digital media really capable of iconic Imagery? It is ideal to think of the information and freedom that digital media comes with. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristics that still hold true for iconic image creation. Images that are most salient in the minds of the audiences must still be a representative of an event, foster emotional connection and still be acknowledged by the public (675), media gatekeeping can also work to realize this.

References

Dahmen, N. S., & Morrison, D. D. (2016). Place, Space, Time: Media gatekeeping and iconic imagery in the digital and social media age. Digital Journalism, 4(5), 658-678.