Multimodal Media and discourse.
Macken-Horarik, M. “The children overboard affair” Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 26.2 (2003), 1-16.
According to Macken-Horarik ‘multimodal’ media is the most common type of western ‘news’ in today’s global society. Basically every front-page story uses interplay of both image and verbiage that works to shape our understanding and perception of the story at hand. Although this multimodal information does seem to create a greater understanding of a given event, the way in which these two medias are perceived together rather than as separate ‘stories’ can aid, for better or worse, the social discourse of society.
As Macken-Horarik notes, the “Children Overboard” case is a perfect example of how a political story has had a major effect on the discourse of Australian attitudes towards refugees. The verbiage itself was accusatory towards the refugees but, with the release of photos depicting children in the water and a navy officer rescuing them, now known to be from a totally separate instance, the combined impact on Australian perceptions was massive.
Even if these accounts have now been proven to be false, or supposedly ‘misreported’, the fact is that the text provided what many people thought of as fact and the image was left burnt on our memories. Whether intentional or not these types of multimodal media reports continue to have huge effects on discourse in society.
Through Macken-Horarik’s reading, the effect language and pictures have on society’s discourse can be seen not only in their relationship to one another, but also in the tools applied to these media. Our opinions are also influenced by the ways in which the ‘social actors’ of the piece have been portrayed to us by the journalist or media producer.
In many of the news reports that have predominantly influenced discourse, the reporter uses ‘genericisation’ in describing the participant(s). Genericisation, along with the allocation of essentialism (i.e. traits specific to groups of people), leaves the audience to view a whole group as theoretically accountable for the actions of an individual. We can also see in the case study of the “Children Overboard” that the navy officers were assigned a functionalist role, engendering a sense of duty and reason for their actions.
These tools of representation and grammar are deployed in every scope of media available to us. They can be used not only to ‘paint’ the most accurate picture possible, but also as a means to coerce us, the public, towards a certain viewpoint. Whether these coercions are intentional does not change the influence this multimodal media has on the discourse of society’s attitudes towards others and all facets of life.
Hi Kate
Your conclusion “They can be used not only to ‘paint’ the most accurate picture possible, but also as a means to coerce us, the public, towards a certain viewpoint…” really stood out to me.
It is scary how easily people are manipulated by the media to believe something due to the combination of verbiage and images. And this isn’t to say that audiences are passive idiots who believe what they see without questioning it. However, in my own experience, trying to convince someone that a certain race wasn’t allll violent and that most of that belief came from how they are portrayed in the media, proved to be very difficult. These forms of multimodal media are just so powerful and once people become more educated about this influence they will start to question it themselves.