Photography is heavily used in news and entertainment media. Learning about this technology and the way that, at inception, it affected human interaction with art, education, science, etc. helps to shape the way we view media and images today.
Media literacy
Media literacy is important because we are bombarded with mass media images every day through television, magazines, in our urban landscapes, on the internet, and especially through social media on our mobile devices.So what do we do? We could hide, limit 'screen time,' read more and watch less... but I would argue that in modern society, it is virtually impossible to protect ourselves from the media. Instead, we must equip ourselves with the knowledge and understanding required to analyse the media - to know when an image has been cropped or edited to suit a particular narrative. And to ask 'why?' and 'what's missing?'
Can a photograph lie?
In the photos above, we can see how even just the angle at which a photo is taken can change the story. During the coronavirus pandemic, keeping a social distance of two metres was recommended (or law) in many countries. The angle of the first photo makes it look like people are crowded together, when in reality, they were lined up with an appropriate amount of space between them.Always question an image that might not look quite right. Visit Common Sense Education to learn how to use Google reverse image search to fact-check an image.
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