| Drawing on social semiotic approach and Visual Grammar,the present research orients to exploring how meanings are construed by means of different semiotic choices in the news images covering terror incidents based on a comparative study on how China Daily visually reports terror incidents both at home and abroad.Keeping this in mind,the present research set out to collect the research data from the official website of China Daily,in which two prominent and influential events,Kunming 3.01 terror incident and Paris 11.13 terror incident,were selected.Altogether 128 valid first-hand news images were obtained,with 65 for Kunming incident and 63 for Paris incident.Afterwards,it is through a quantitative and qualitative analysis that the present study answers the following three research questions:(1)What types of semiotic choices are respectively employed to construe representational and interactive meanings when it comes to the news images for Kunming 3.01 terror incident and Paris 11.13 terror incident?(2)What are the similarities and differences amid the construction of representational and interactive meanings of the news images covering these two events?(3)What are the possible reasons or underlying mechanism that might help to throw light upon these similarities and differences?It is discovered that the news images for the two terror incidents both employ certain choices of semiotic modes in the representational and interactive systems.According to the major findings,one of the similarities is that in terms of the representational system,the processes amount to an overwhelmingly larger portion than the circumstances,with the transactional action processes and the non-transactional reactional processes being much more salient.Moreover,with respect to the interactive system,it is also detected that the integration of the offer image acts,long shots,oblique and eye-level angles is most favored in the visual coverage of both news events.Apart from all these similarities mentioned above,the differences also exist.Regarding the representational system,it is found that in the news images involving the transactional action processes,civilians in Kunming incident are sometimes depicted as getting back to their normal life while the attention of the news images for Paris incident is spared to depict people's instant reactions shortly after the attack,however.Besides,the differences can also be detected in the news images reflecting non-transactional reactional processes,that is,the depressed senior officials are also more notable in Paris incident,which were rare in Kunming incident.Furthermore,when it comes to the interactive system,even if in the news images concerning the demand image acts,the senior officials in Kunming incident are depicted with determined and confident looks,conveying a sort of positive message whereas their counterparts in Paris incident are shown with serious and frowning expressions,which is somewhat negative.For the differences in the selection of shots and angles,comparatively more medium shots,oblique and eye-level angles are favored in the news images for Kunming incident while more close and long shots,frontal,high and low angles are preferred in those photos for Paris incident.Having figured out all these above findings,the present research proceeds to figure out that the selection of certain semiotic modes is in essence closely associated with the factors like the working mechanism of the press,news values as well as embedded ideology and power structure.Based on all of the above findings and interpretation,the present research expects,for one thing,to widen the scope of both research of multimodality and terrorism;for another,to make it more efficient for news readers to get access to the meaning potentials of news images as well as improving their competence of reading images critically. |
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