Sage Publications Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media Culture

Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media and Culture provides a theoretical and empirical toolkit to examine implications of mediated images. It explores a range of approaches to visual analysis, while also providing a hands-on guide to applying methods to students′ own work. The book: Illustrates a range of perspectives, from content analysis and semiotics, to multimodal and critical discourse analysis Explores the centrality of images to issues of identity and representation, politics and activism, and commodities and consumption Brings theory to life with a host of original case studies, from celebrity videos on Youtube and civil unrest on Twitter, to the lifestyle branding of Vice Media and Getty Images Shows students how to combine approaches and methods to best suit their own research questions and projects  An invaluable guide to analysing contemporary media images, this is essential reading for students and researchers of visual communication and visual culture.  Review This smart and engaging book introduces readers to some of the most pressing debates in visual communications studies. Effective in making often-opaque theories accessible, Aiello and Parry situate these debates in relation to a diverse toolkit of current research methods. Eighteen thickly-contextualized case studies skillfully illustrate the various steps students need to design their own projects. -- Wendy Kozol Organised around the themes of identities, politics and commodification, this book offers multiple conceptual insights into how images are created, circulated, seen, sold, modified and destroyed. Its themes and arguments are grounded in a series of detailed and clearly written examples, which also explore the methodological implications of approaching images as forms of visual communication. All this adds up to a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary visual culture. -- Gillian Rose How can we understand images in media culture? Writing with clarity, insight and flair, Aiello and Parry show us that while there is no simple answer, there are many good analytical paths to pursue, demonstrating their value across no less than eighteen case studies – from political memes to photojournalism to Hollywood movie trailers and commercial imagery. Focusing on how visual communication is entangled with identities, politics and commodities, this book is not only an exemplary introduction to visual communication research: it is a significant and timely guide to the powers and properties of contemporary images. -- Paul Frosh Compelling and wide-reaching… Aiello and Parry provide us with a sense of how persuasive the visual is today and how it insinuates itself into all aspects of life, from everyday interactions to the dramas of high politics, from advertising to crisis diplomacy, and from selfies to national celebrations. -- Roland Bleiker ― The International Journal of Press/Politics Published On: 2021-05-17 Aiello and Parry have chosen to focus on one important visual site: mediated images, according to three theoretically rich approaches: identity, politics and commodities. Each chapter is supported by their own case studies of contemporary visual phenomena, such as iconicity in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the discursive strategies of the opening title sequence from the Netflix series  Orange Is the New Black, and the design strategies that distinguish the website  Vice.com… their project will be welcome not only to many classrooms but to the field at large. -- Mary Angela Bock ― Visual Communication Published On: 2021-05-17 Giorgia Aiello and Katy Parry present the subject of visual communication in various contexts, not avoiding difficult, ethically demanding and contemporary topics. They show the power of images in the contemporary media sphere. -- Recenzja Ksiazki ― Studio Medionawcze Published On: 2021-05-03 ...it marks the maturation of the visual research discipline. Aiello and Parry’s f