What kinds of images are shown in political television news? How can the degree of non-genuine events in covering international politics be measured? The aim of the article is to answer these questions and to show the results of a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of international political news in Public Swiss television network. The results of the analysis of 29 news stories with 226 scenes are discussed on the basis of methodological and theoretical criteria. One of the results is that the number of sequences which show artificial, mediated events is not higher than the number of genuine events, but stories of non-genuine events have longer durations and contain a different type of representation of people.
»Bilder lessen«; the phrase reading pictures, meant altogether seriously by authors even to be taken seriously (e.g. Claude Gandelman: ›Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts‹, 1991), finds in the current aesthetic discourse increasingly use. Against this background shall, on the one hand, the essential features of that kind of foveal vision which may be aptly named reading be inquired and it will be examined to what extent the viewing of pictures can be referred to as such in a non-metaphoric sense. This question is, on the other hand, not independent from the query of the constitution of those formations of graphic signs which may establish ›reading materials‹. – Is reading perhaps the general mode of the reception of texts and therefore – if we follow the supporters of a potentially overstretched conception of text – of pictures as well? It shall be attempted to show that at least from an etymological point of view there is not that much to be said against conceiving even a picture as text; written texts, however, own, what’s more, though likewise presentational forms in the sense of Susanne Langer, a linear-discursive constitution
This historical essay focuses on the implementation and the effect of images, charts and maps on the Native American during the Christianizing campaigns of the Jesuit mission in the 17th century. The detailed mission reports allow us to describe the introduction of the mimetic image in an indigene culture as a technological transfer which made the acculturative process work. Images captured and refracted current tensions, and set off feelings of curiosity and anxiety. Particularly frightening was their presence in an environment foreign to the American mind and in the context of a rigid installation, which urged the spectator into a specific attitude or closed up possible escape routes as, for example, a chapel‘s interior. The missionaries were inclined to misunderstand the Red Indian‘s reactions as religious fear. However, the ambivalent feelings of the savages seem to be quite similar to those encountered in a chamber of horrors. This is substantiated by the fear of the native American that images could by themselves look, speak and behave. When the Indian allowed himself the show, however, he did so at his own risk without a claim for compensation against a potentially liable operator. For all damages beyond mere iconic enchantment he alone took responsibility. Thanks to the missionary reports we get a better understanding of what the introduction of illusionary images meant to a sign controlled, semiotic society. As for any cultural step in a new direction, the simulacrum, or mimetic image involved a shock-like experience of which we have no adequate idea in an updated world where images have become part of the fabric of common sense. Civilized nations have forgotten what two or three generations ago people felt when for the first time they entered a darkened cinema hall, went through an automatic entrance door, or set foot on the moving step of an escalator. And yet, these are the traumatic occurrences, of which our modern societies – one may think of nowadays IMAX-theatres – ascertain themselves with every new development. The trick is to demonstrate against all appearances: I am not terrified!
The sociological question of this paper is: How can we construct a machine for non-photorealistic rendering that provoke the same success in western societies like a photorealistic digital camera or like a 3-D-Game-Engine. The sociological view points out why non-photorealistic representation needs a visual cultural and individual style for visual communication with images.
