The document discusses how images can be used effectively in online journalism. It begins by explaining that images have the power to convey meaning and attract reader interest more than text alone. News organizations consider factors like relevance, recency, and whether a photo clearly shows an individual mentioned in an article. Images depicting people are often preferred as they generate more impact. The document also discusses how maps, word clouds, infographics, and cartoons can visualize information. It notes that while photos seem objective, they reflect the photographer's point of view, and cautions about using others' images without permission. A case study found that images with captions had more influence on attitudes than full text or text-only articles. In summary, the document explores how

1. Telling the Story
with Image
Dr. Salma Elgazzar

2. ● You will have seen some news websites that are so unattractive that you
don't want to even look at them. Then there are websites that are attractive
and interesting and draw you in.
● How a page looks and how news stories are laid out is critical to winning
an audience !!
● A vital part of the journalist's job is to make these story compelling and to
make it look as interesting as possible.
● We are always in the business of being concise and images can enhance the
story in many ways, whatever the platform. Images provide information briefly
that should support the story and add to the audience's knowledge.

3. “ It is no longer enough for
a journalist just to be able
to compose text. It is now
essential that they
understand the interchange
between text and images
which give a website a
visual identity, so
journalists need to get into
the habit of thinking in
images.”

4. The visual journalist
uses digital images
to help make news
pages easy to read
and informative.
The visual journalist
could be an editor, a
website designer, a
layout specialist, or
it could be one
person who does
everything on a
news website.
we will deal with
that vital ingredient-
the digital image-
including graphics,
photographs and
cartoons.
Photographs have
multiple uses and
can show the
scene and the
subject and capture
a moment in time.

5. How do news organizations choose what photos they want?
• That's done in the same way with the
editor choosing something that could
go with a brief article or a photo and
caption.
• It will need a diversity of themes, a
mix.
• The picture editor choosing the images
will match the photos to the story but
will choose them in terms of the look
aesthetically and very importantly,
the composition."

6. • Take or Choose Quality Images
• Lighting
• Choosing the Right Camera
• Choosing the Right Shot
How do news organizations choose what photos they want?

9. We distinguished five steps in the visual gatekeeping process:
1) the selection of news-by-news editors,
2) the search for visuals matching the news by photo editors,
3) the selection of visuals by photo editors based on criteria of ‘what’ is
pictured, ‘how’ it is pictured and eventually ‘why’ it is relevant,
4) consultation between photo editors, news editors and layout,
5) final decision making either in consensus or by hierarchical decision.

10. The visual decision-making process:
As the news editors decide which topics the newspaper will cover, the first step in the
process is taken before the photo editors enter the scene, in this way the photo editors
are limited to ‘illustrating’ the chosen news.
They have three main sources to do so:
1- Firstly, photo editors give assignments to a pool of about 15 freelance photographers;
2- secondly, they select visuals supplied by agencies as Belga, Photo News, Reuters,
Associated Press, Agence France Presse and The European Pressphoto Agency;
3- thirdly, they search archives for suitable photo material.
Photo editors narrow down the possibilities to only a few but actual decision-making tends to
be a collaborative process.

11. Implicit photo selection criteria
The information value of the photo prevails:
‘A photo has to fit in with what the newspaper stands for and that is, above all,
giving information.
Information above aesthetics.’ Another photo editor referred to the ‘illustration value’
of photos.
This does not mean that pictures have to be ‘neutral’: a strong image is ‘an image
that speaks for itself and reverberates for a long time’. A good image tells a story and
gives news facts a face.
Truthfulness not only applies to contents (what is pictured) but also to technical
aspects (how it is pictured). Truthfulness implies natural and spontaneous
photographs. Beside, adhering to the code of ethics and privacy rights

12. Contextual photo selection criteria:
‘contextual’ aspects also play a vital role in the selection and rejection process.
By ‘contextual’ we mean external to the photo itself but dealing with the
immediate newspaper context.
Editors pointed at trivial factors such as ‘avoiding the color red’ due to the low
quality of paper print, at economic/amicable factors such as the preference for
‘house photographers’ above wire photographs, and at rather decisive
elements concerning pages’ layout, display issues and composition:
If there are already two ‘landscape’ orientated pictures on the pages before,
you need to look for a ‘portrait’ orientated picture, otherwise there seems to be
a fixed pattern. (Photo editor, male)

13. HOW IMAGES CAN BE USED TO DECEIVE

14. HOW IMAGES CAN BE USED TO DECEIVE
• Photographs are not value-free images capturing a moment of time. Every photograph
involves decisions by the person taking the photo. Once you have a photograph you
can manipulate it using computer programs.
• Software can allow you to radically change the image or even merge images. You can
write a caption that gives the picture an entirely different meaning.
• The viewer, depending on many things including their culture and agenda, may see
something different from what the photographer intended This all raises some of the
ethical and theoretical aspects of news photographs

15. HOW IMAGES CAN BE
USED TO DECEIVE

16. What is “Real”!?
• A photograph may appear to simply record what is 'real' before the photographer's
eyes. But what is 'real' is an entirely subjective viewpoint.
• As the iconic art critic John Berger (1972) says, "Every time we look at a photograph,
we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from infinity
of other possible sights.

17. A family flees Mosul, as oil fields burn in Qayyarah, 60 kilometers south of the city.

18. Although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or
appreciation of an image depend also upon our own way of seeing.’ When
photographs are added to a news website, they add new dimensions of
meaning to a text.
Our world-view is a construct of a range of socio-
cultural influences including class, gender, race,
religion, ethnicity, sexuality, age, family, health,
nationality, education, political beliefs, occupation
and ideology. These all influence how a photographer
sees the world and how they photograph it.

19. The famous photojournalist Ansel Adams once pointed
out that even in landscapes there are personalities
present:
"There are always two people in every picture: the
photographer and the viewer. One of the fundamental
requirements for the functioning of the photographic
system is that both the photographer and the audience
have the same reference points.”

20. Using the Image of Others
• Many blogs and personal websites use images stolen from other
websites or simply downloaded from Google Images. Although
this practice is widespread, it doesn't mean it is ethically or
legally right.
• Just to be clear, unless you generated the image yourself (i.e.
you took the picture) or have the permission of the copyright
holder, you shouldn't use it.
• We must respect the fact that photojournalists need to make a
living and you will need to negotiate a fee to use their images.

21. • Some photographers release their images under creative commons licenses
as an alternative to full 'all rights reserved right’.
• A search on the image-sharing site Flickr (www.flickr.com) sts reveals many
images that can be used for free as long as the name of the photographer is
properly attributed.

22. INFOGRAPHICS
Graphics are all about visualizing
information.
It can be very simple, but graphics are
really effective at taking complex
information and making it very simple
to understand.

23. Word clouds
Wordle is a program for generating 'word clouds' from text. For in stance, you can grab
hundreds of tweets on a specific subject and see what words reoccur. The clouds give greater
prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds
with different fonts, layouts and color schemes.
Here's an interesting word cloud from the BBC. Police in Greater Manchester had completed a
24-hour experiment to record every incident they deal with on Twitter. They hoped it would give
the public a better idea of the demands made upon them.
The reporter turned the Twitter feeds into a word cloud.

24. Using Maps
● Mainstream media frequently
make use of maps to illustrate stories.
● Newsmap is an application that
tracks trending topics.
● It employs a hierarchy of color
blocks to highlight the currently
hottest stories. on the websites of
news outlets in 15 countries.

25. Cartoon
● A cartoon is a piece of art, commenting on a news event, usually humorous
in intent. This usage dates from 1843 when Punch magazine applied the
term to satirical drawings in its pages, particularly sketches by John Leech.
The first was Leech's 'Cartoon no. 1: Substance and Shadow" (1843), which
satirized preparatory cartoons for frescoes in the Palace of Westminster,
creating the modern meaning of 'cartoon".

27. Cartoon
● Cartoons are found almost exclusively in news publications and news
websites.
● Although they also employ humour, they have a more serious purpose of
encapsulation, commonly using irony or satire to make the point.
● The art usually acts as a visual metaphor to illustrate a point of view on
current social and/or political topics. Editorial cartoons often include
speech balloons and, sometimes, multiple panels.

28. Hurricane Ian, Joe Biden and the March to the
Midterms: The Week in Cartoons Oct. 3-7
The president tours storm damage as Republicans and
Democrats trade barbs ahead of midterm elections.

29. The power of images in online journalism
● There has been a shift from mostly text-based content towards a greater proportion of
pictorial content. Unlike text, images have the power to convey meaning ‘at one
stroke’ and more powerfully than words.
● UK research findings published in 2017 found that images in online journalism serve
as eye-catchers that stimulate engagement of readers and attract reader interest in
news stories.
● Other studies found journalists tended to seek ‘attractive’, ‘eye-catching’, and ‘attention
grabbing’ images. Close-up photos of people were most often desired, and
photographs of specific people and portraits generally dominated in news publications.

30. The power of images in online journalism
● Online media assess images for topical relevance, recency, and accessibility of
visual information in the image.
● There is a clear preference for images depicting people whenever a specific person
is related to the story.
● If a specific person’s name is used as a search term, the general rule is to select an
image of this person with their face clearly visible. The two photographs below
illustrate this point.

31. The photo of the footballer in the left hand, original, wider-angle shot has been cropped, so in the
second, right-hand image the player’s face is highlighted, his body has been centered in the image, and
slightly more of the image to the left of the player’s body (his right-hand side) is shown. It is a stronger
shot with more human interest.
https://cuttingedgepr.com/visual-images-will-interest-media-in-your-news-angle/

32. • Photographs used in online news sites tended to assess relevance of images at
the level of individual objects depicted in them, e.g. a presence of a
particular person, rather than of the image as an item.
• They clearly did not search for the ideal image, instead they tended to search
for images that could be Photoshopped (‘image tailoring’ rather than changing
images) to create visually engaging illustrations. Image tailoring is not
equivalent to fixing of images. All images have to good resolution and
sharpness.
• Many selections are based on content that requires an image depicting a
specific person. For instance, in the study group, 76% of illustrations typically
depicted one person, of which 73% showed a identifiable person. Images
depicting people were selected purposefully, since it is likely these images
would generate stronger visual impact on readers.

33. Case STUDY

34. Previous research has shown that
images used in advertising can greatly
influence a consumer’s attitude about a
product, with large, vivid imaging
enhancing recall and being viewed
more favorably. This study sought to
find if images used in the news
media had the same level of
emotional effect on attitude.

35. Hypotheses:
1-3 examined the relative impact of three print news forms:
• pictures with captions,
• pictures with full text, and
• text only
On subjects’ attitudes toward the U.S. military operations in Iraq, their
involvement levels toward specific military issues, and the extent to
which news stories elicited affect in readers

36. Visual images demand a viewer’s attention. Photos have the
ability to convey drama and emotion and realism in a way that text
alone cannot.
Visual images can short circuit higher levels of cognition and
reasoning, because they are more lifelike and easier for the brain to
process.
Also, because the brain codes visual and nonvisual information
separately, the additional memory coding can increase information
recall.

37. Results of the study revealed that sufficient evidence exists to support
the hypotheses that images with a caption exert greater impact on
viewers’ attitudes compared to images with text.
It also showed images with a caption exert greater impact on
involvement levels than text alone and that images elicit greater affect
than images with text.
Main Results

38. Thank You!