The papers from Rosen (2005) and Brunner & DeLuca (2016) primarily focuses on the way images and media overall has shifted people’s perceptions on events happening in the world. Giving examples from real life such as the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the Greenpeace campaign and their impacts on the way society views media. The former, focuses on the negative affects the image culture has on society in the long term, primarily focusing on ideas such as the normalization of natural disaster images and how they make people feel disconnected from media since images make it easy for live life turn into being displayed immediately. While the latter focuses on a different aspect of how images are a powerful tool used in media to lead campaigns that have led to companies taking steps in the positive direction and real change being made. I personally agree with the points made in both readings and I believe that images have been a powerful tool used to persuade people and let them engage with realities they have felt disconnected to, however they have also become unreliable with new technologies and overused which has led them to lose some of their power.

To help explain the media effects I would like to mention a current real-life example that has personally affected me and evaluate the points made in both papers. Recently there have been earthquakes in Turkey which have destroyed huge cities and have killed thousands of people. As a Turkish person living outside of the country, the only information I could get on the topic was through social media and I saw a lot of people sharing information and images about the events happening which was moving. These images circulating on social media helped a lot of people learn about an event happening in the rest of the world immediately which is an incredibly powerful aspect of images, being able to create awareness in society. The images were able to convey the pain felt by the people affected by the tragedy affectively enough to influence people to try to help. I really felt people coming together to donate and spread awareness for the cause which proved the power of images in influencing people to act and even change the circumstances of people affected by the tragedy. These types of images being made available for everyone has changed the way society consumes information in the new age and how they react towards it.

However, I will also mention how disaster images like these have circulating might be traumatic for certain people and maybe certain people should not be photographed since they may not want the information to be out which creates an argument against journalists and the immediate switch from events happening and them being presented online for the entire world to see. There was a point made in Rosen (2005) which argued that the overproduction of images such as these could lead to possibly normalizing tragedies like this happening and there would no longer be shock factor that influences people’s emotions. Brunner & DeLuca (2016) talks about the impact of images in evoking emotions however Rosen (2005) calls attention to this side of normalization of pain & tragedy which can be harmful. There is also a point made about how the new age of media consumption where everyone is subjected to moving images every single second have caused there to be less care for these one second images of disaster people see as they just need immediate stimulation and a flow of images. This affects my media consumption and makes me aware of my need for visual stimulation since most of the time, I feel quite numb to seeing these pictures of disasters mentioned before as I have become used to them which is a harmful effect of the image culture and has led to the decrease of the impact of images.

References:
Brunner, E. A., & DeLuca, K. M. (2016). The argumentative force of image networks: Greenpeace’s panmediated Global Detox campaign. Argumentation and Advocacy, 52(4), 281–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.2016.11821875
Rosen, C. (2020, September 26). The image culture. The New Atlantis. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-image-culture
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