The Visual Truth?

You may be wondering how visual art is used to influence the public and prevent the spread of misinformation among a population. In this paper, I will first address the modes of access in order to better understand how to use the same methods in art-making to counter the heighten fear grown from artificial sources and to see if progress is possible. Mirroring methods used in advertising, the media spread information as if it is packaged, a commodity. An extreme, open-ended headline invites doubt into your head. A typical headline reads, “Are you and your family at risk?”, “The Top Ten Things Women Must Know to Keep Safe”, or “Ammo on Airplanes”. The headline is accompanied by a strong visual image; emphasis and contrast as principles of design are employed. The image and the headline stay with you, especially in the current multitask-oriented culture where viewer attention is hard to obtain and keep. Combine this with the juiciest partial details and placement; the image has the power to pull the viewer into an article or a news story. We, the viewers, remember what we see more than what is said or cited. The more graphic and extreme the image, the more likely the image becomes part of our memory. We store the imagery and then can use it later on- pulling up the image as proof in our minds. This exemplifies the availability heuristic, a cognitive bias in which a person relies upon what can easily be remembered rather than complete data.

Statistics and numbers get repeated so often and numbers are presented in large, whole quantities, e.g. 800,000 children younger than 18 are missing each year, or an average of 2,000 children reported missing each day in the United States. The statistics and numbers are not broken down ...

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...ogress of the nation. Moisi addresses the role of the media in promoted and prolonging this state of fear.

Siegel, Marc. False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear. Hoboken, NJ: John

Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005. Siegel emphasizes the climate of exaggerated fear found in the media, advertising, and politics. He believes that the majority of fears are manufactured and the fire they create, is stoked by the hidden (or not-so-hidden) agendas of the media and government. Siegel believes the public needs to learn to assess real threats and be able to develop a set of skills that will help the public deal with real danger. I share Siegel’s belief that the false fears need to be identified and the power returned to the public through education.

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 July 2004. Wikimedia Foundation. 10 Aug. 2004

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