Infographics and the Rhetoric of Numbers

Hello everyone!

For this week’s reading, we read an excerpt about infographics from White Space is Not Your Enemy, in addition to watching a presentation from Dr. Joanna Wolfe.

In White Space is Not Your Enemy, authors Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen argue that infographics are an effective medium of communicating information. They affirm that infographics can convey information in more accessible and digestible ways than text alone and that it is actually sometimes more practical to present information in this way. In Dr. Wolfe's presentation she illustrates how numbers are rhetorical choices with different emotional impacts depending on what they count, how they count, and how the number is represented with languages or visuals. She explains that the rhetorical choices made, seemingly small differences in the delivery of a statistic such as the word choice, emphasis on certain pieces, and the arrangement and order of data, can actually create large impacts on the type of argument that the information presents.

For this week’s blog assignment, I’m asking everyone to first find a recent infographic and identify what type of graphic it is. Argue whether or not you think the infographic you have chosen sufficiently or insufficiently displays the information presented and explain your position. What is it about the infographic that makes it efficient or inefficient at presenting its data? 

Some questions to consider: What rhetorical choices are being made? Is the graphic able to stand as a document of its own without additional research? Are the sources credible? You can also use some of our previous understanding of how color and typography can be used to communicate in images.

Use a quote from the reading from White Space is Not Your Enemy chapter and/or Dr. Wolfe’s presentation to support your claim about the effectiveness of your infographic and its numbers (if it has any).

Types of infographics outlined in WSINYE:

• Text boxes, Sequences, Maps, Diagrams, Charts and Graphs (162)
•  Multimedia (165)
• Graphics packages – use multiple types of graphics together (166)

Here is an example of the type of post I'm asking for:

This infographic created by Forbes and Statista displays information about countries most and least prepared for an epidemic. It is a graphics package, as it includes both a map and a horizontal bar chart to portray the information. It is ineffective at presenting which countries are best and worst prepared for an epidemic. Although the information from the graphic was explained as information found based on “factors critical to fighting disease outbreaks,” it does not explain what kind of factors were analyzed. As such, the numbers listed in the bar graphs, such as 83.5 for USA and 77.9 for UK, cannot be easily understood or interpreted by most readers. Additional research will be needed to properly understand what these numbers mean. Golombisky and Hagen explain that “infographics shouldn’t rely on information buried somewhere else,” so this infographic cannot stand on its own (172). This infographic and its numbers appear to be more of an image depicting to people who live in US and the UK that their countries were once considered to be strongly prepared for epidemics. To me, the rhetorical choices made in this infographic, like the longer bars displaying the top three countries, were to emphasize their lead over other countries. However, without explaining what exactly it was about their health factors that made these countries seem more prepared than others, I believe the purpose of graphic is more so to display the irony of how some of the countries that are currently facing difficulty with the COVID-19 pandemic were previously considered to be very prepared to tackle an outbreak.

Writing Cultural Critique

Hello!

This week’s reading focuses on Essay 2 and the two student examples given to us on Blackboard. Essay 2 asks us to write a visual cultural critique and thus can be about subjects like class, gender, race, age, etc. and can offer important lessons about all of them.

We ask you to read the two Essay 2 examples provided on Blackboard then answer the following questions:

• What aspects of cultural critique are you writing about?
• What theory are you going to use to frame the subject and why?
• Is there anything from the two essays that you particularly liked and were thinking about incorporating in your paper? Conversely, are there things to avoid?

As a reminder, here are the theories that we are using in Essay 2:

• Roland Barthes’ theory of Denotative and Connotative meanings
• Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism and the Other
• Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze

We also invite you to share the challenges you’re having in writing this paper. It might lead to new ideas/perspectives about your subject that you could then incorporate in your paper, and we’re all for creating stronger papers.

With that, we hope you all stay safe and have an easy time navigating the rest of the semester!

Watching in the Dark: The Male Gaze in Cinema

Hi Everyone,

Hope you’re all staying healthy while trying to make the best of the situation that we’re in.
We know this transition is difficult, so our prompt will give you a chance to sit back and
watch some movie clips and apply them to this week’s reading.

Mulvey's "Viewing Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" and The Practices of Looking (pp.
120-129) focus on the male gaze present in visual representations of women, specifically in film.
According to Mulvey, there has been "a split between active/male and passive/female...In their
traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their
appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to be
looked-at-ness" (837). Mulvey emphasizes that women do not move the plot forward in narrative
films, but they are simply there to be viewed by the male characters and audience members.
Although Mulvey was writing in the 1970s, these ideas still hold true today in modern films.

This week, we are asking you to complete the following prompt.

1. Watch these 4 movie clips:

Dirty Dancing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61j9p_S3rQ

Miss Congeniality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj9CBZX-SKQ

Wolf of Wall Street:

https://youtu.be/x-51mt2tIVw

Wonder Woman:

https://youtu.be/pJCgeOAKXyg


2. Choose one to write about. If several other students have chosen the same clip, please
consider responding to their post with your own ideas that add to the larger conversation.

3. Argue whether or not this clip demonstrates the male gaze as outlined in Mulvey’s essay.
How do you think Mulvey may respond to this clip?

To help you with your post, here are some of the key vocabulary words from the readings.

It is not necessary to use these in your post, but just keep them in mind when thinking and writing
about the male gaze.

Voyeurism - Pleasure is derived from looking without being seen.

Phallocentrism - The phallus, a symbol of men’s power, is the main element in the organization
of the world.

Scopophilia - The sexual pleasure that a person derives from looking at prurient objects of eroticism,
such as pornography, the nude body, and fetishes, etc., as a substitute for actual participation in a
sexual relationship.

The Gaze and the Other: The Effects of Binary Opposition and Relationships of Power in an Increasingly Visual Culture

This week’s reading was on the representation of “other” groups in visual culture, or minority groups that are perceived to be different from an ethnocentric, patriarchal perspective. This chapter focuses closely on the idea of “the gaze”, which is the way that the audience of a visual is intended to perceive the subject of the visual. While this theory can be applied to any person portrayed in any image, it is most frequently perceived as the lens that a group holding some form of power (whether it be racialized, gendered, sexualized, economic, or social status) views the “lower” group through, and the ways that the visual is constructed to influence this. 

Another way of analyzing “the gaze” is through the concept of binary opposition. Binary opposition is a pair of two things that are perceived to be polar opposites. In practice, this can refer to almost any opposite concept, however, for the purposes of this week’s blog, we are focusing specifically on diametrically opposing social groups where one has historically wielded social power over the other, such as male/female, white/non-white, cis-gendered/transgendered, straight/LGBTQ+, rich/poor, and so forth.

For this week’s blog, we want the class to:

1. Either find an image of someone who is binarily opposed to you in some way or find an image where binary oppositions are reflected within the image itself, explain what you perceive to be the intent or message(s) of the image, and how the image you chose is supposed to make its intended audience feel about the subject of the photo, advertisement, etc. Please find recent images to focus on modern visual culture!

2. Explain the deeper social issue(s) being exemplified within the image (racism, classism, sexism, etc.) and what specifically the image does to showcase it. How does the opposition featured within the image exacerbate social issues and cultural stereotypes by portraying certain demographics as other? How does it seek to subjugate, dominate, or marginalize the subject(s) of the image? Are you, the “spectator,” interpellated by the image? These are just a few questions that you can consider as you post your responses and please be sure to reference the reading!

While finding images and examples of binary oppositions within visual culture, reflect on these terms from this week’s reading:

The Gaze: helps to “establish relationships of power, which typically function to represent codes of dominance and subjugation, difference and otherness... In systems of representation, meaning is established through difference” (Sturken & Cartwright 111).

Unmarked: The first category designated by binary oppositions is the unmarked or the “norm”. For example, Sturken and Cartwright state that “the category of white is understood in European American contexts to be the primary category or the ‘norm’” (Sturken & Cartwright 111). The unmarked demographics are perceived as dominant. 

Marked: The second category is the “marked,” or what the authors define as other. Whereas white is understood to be the “norm” in the example above, black (or brown, etc.) is understood as other to that category - what is not white (Sturken & Cartwright 111). The marked demographics are subverted or subjugated by the unmarked.

Interpellated: The authors define interpellation as “A process of interruption through which an individual viewer comes to recognize himself or herself as among the class or group of subjects for whom the message seems to be intended” (Sturken & Cartwright 103).  

Above is a Ralph Lauren Safari Ad from the 1990s, which was featured on page 113 of our reading for this week. It is an example of binary opposition, as it demonstrates Western v. Eastern cultures and Occidental v. Oriental ideals. The "unmarked" would be Western, while the "marked" is Eastern.