Meanings In Images:a Multimodal Analysis Of Press Photographs Of Natural Disasters In Online News Galleries

Historically, press photographs have been viewed as dependent on verbal texts in the news reports. In today’s digital world, the prominent status of press photographs is noticeable in the trend of image-dominated news reports. Traditional studies on press photographs focus on the technical and ethical aspects of visual representation, which overlook the role of press photographs in the visual reporting of news events. Previous multimodal studies on press photographs adopt a social semiotic approach to explore the meanings construed through press photographs. However, there is still a paucity of quantitative multimodal analysis of press photographs concerning a particular news event.Within the framework of visual grammar, the present study intends to explore representational and interactive meanings construed through press photographs concerning natural disasters. Altogether 204 press photographs collected from 21-event based online news galleries concerning natural disasters on the China Daily website are the data for the present research. The present study attempts to explore the following three questions:1) What kinds of processes and circumstances are used to realize the representational meanings in the press photographs of natural disasters? 2) What types of semiotic choices in the three simultaneous systems (contact, social distance and attitude) tend to cluster together to construe interactive meanings in the press photographs of natural disasters? 3) What might be the possible reasons that can account for the choices in making representational and interactive meanings in the press photographs of natural disasters?With a systematic multimodal analysis of the representational and interpersonal meanings of 204 press photographs, it is found that press photographs of natural disasters deploy particular semiotic choices in representational and interactive systems. In terms of representational meanings, the number of press photographs which contain action processes is almost twice more than that of photographs which involve reactional processes. Action processes are frequently employed to dynamically describe the ongoing rescue activities in the stricken areas. Reactional processes, especially non-transactional reactional processes, reflect victims’grief and perplexity since in these processes what the victims look at cannot be found in the press photographs. In terms of interactive meanings, photographs which involve inanimate participants adopt long shots and high angles in order to objectively present the whole picture of the stricken areas while photographs which involve animate participants adopt medium shots and frontal and eye-level angles to create intimate relations between the viewers and the represented participants. All these semiotic choices which are adopted to construe representational and interactive meanings in press photographs of natural disasters correspond to the communicative functions of press photographs, the news values of natural disasters and the visual agenda-setting theory.Press photographs have become an important vehicle for multimodal news reporting. The present study not only broadens the scope of multimodal studies but also helps both media practitioners and readers gain a better understanding of representational and interactive meanings construed in press photographs.