Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publisher
Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools
Faculty
Faculty of Education and Arts
School
School of Communication and Arts / Centre for Research in Entertainment, Arts, Technology, Education and Communications
RAS ID
14557
Abstract
Political campaigns are greatly influenced by changes in technology and communication, from FDR’s ‘Fireside Chats’ to JFK’s embrace of television. Now a combination of technologies allows almost everyone to create, reproduce, transform, and share images with friends and family, or with the world. Individuals and grassroots organisations can communicate using images alongside mainstream media, corporations and governments. There is now a great need for all of us to develop the visual literacy – or graphicacy – required to interpret and recreate images, to communicate as educated equals in this new political environment. Political advertising can use graphic design to make implications that they wouldn’t be willing to say explicitly, invoking cultural ideas and associations to make their case, sometimes misleadingly. This paper will look at some of the techniques that are commonly used in political campaigns, and discuss how we can teach people the skills they need to ‘read’ campaign materials and make informed judgments about the arguments being made. Graphicacy is a necessary skill if all citizens are to fully participate in public debate, rather than remain passive audiences. A picture may tell ‘a thousand words’, but as with all political communication it is always open to interpretation. Just as the prevalence of the written word requires literacy for all in a democratic society, so too must we ensure that graphicacy is not a skill that is limited to a small section of the community.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
Comments
Rainey, A. , & Medley, S. (2013). A Picture is worth a thousand votes: Graphicacy skills for political debate. In ACUADS Conference 2012: Region and Isolation: The changing function of art & design education within diasporic cultures and borderless communities. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools (ACUADS). Available here