The Impact of Imagery on Perception

[Sukerkin]

A friend of mine sent me the images and text below:


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Nothing more to be said...


A Tale of Two Cities

This is Lahorein Pakistan....

And this is Dewsbury in the United Kingdom...

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Now I can't comment on the veracity of the photographs, tho the bottom one is more or less certain to be somewhere in England but it did make me think more heavily than usual on how our perceptions of people and countries is shaped by what the media feeds to us by it's multifarious routes.

 

[CanuckMA]

Why, the 2 red 'X's are identical

 

[Sukerkin]

Oh - one of those incidents . The post looked fine to me - I'll sort it out ...

 

[Sukerkin]

Did that solve the Red X problem?

 

[Makalakumu]

I was attempting to have this discussion with several posters here, who promptly blew me off. However, I think you bring up a great point. How do we know that places or people portrayed in media are being portrayed accurately? Perhaps certain portrayals are tailored to fit some preconceived notion or political agenda? People are taught to concoct these elaborate stories about things they've never experienced based off of untested prejudice and uncritical examination of underlying premises.

And it takes a lot of work to overturn that kind of brainwashing...

 

[Archangel M]

Somehow I think this is more typical of the area:

[yt]D9B64aAgeGs[/yt]

 

[crushing]

I was attempting to have this discussion with several posters here, who promptly blew me off. However, I think you bring up a great point. How do we know that places or people portrayed in media are being portrayed accurately? Perhaps certain portrayals are tailored to fit some preconceived notion or political agenda? People are taught to concoct these elaborate stories about things they've never experienced based off of untested prejudice and uncritical examination of underlying premises.

And it takes a lot of work to overturn that kind of brainwashing...

Somehow I think this is more typical of the area:

These two posts work very well together in response to the OP.

Anybody's perception impacted by the imagery provided in the OP? Did anyone's brain start to get washed just a little?

 

[Sukerkin]

I am not entirely sure from the timbre of the above posts that what I meant by my initial post is what people took it to mean.

It was not meant as a de facto diatribe against the images fed to us by those in control of the news outlets but rather to prompt a discussion revolving around the unavoidable fact that modern digital imagery can be placed in any context someone wishes to present the 'story' they wish to tell.

Because I am 'local' to one of the pictures in the mail I was sent (as in being English and knowing what a British town-centre looks like in this 'cookie cutter' era), I could tell that the photo purporting to be Dewsbury was more than likely somewhere in England.

The photo that claims to be Lahore I had my doubts about, primarily by the utter predominance of English lettering on the shops. But my point was, how do I know? It could be. There might be a high income part of the city that retained a consumerist, Western aspect - I can't tell as all I have to go on is what is presented to me.

It is particularly difficult when the 'message' panders to my innate prejudices against the strange viz that the strength of religious fervour for 'Islamic ideals' is stronger in the emigre than in the indig (meaning that 'we' got lumbered with 'their' backward thinking extremist nut-jobs).

So, is it easier to divine the truth of anything in this age of the Net ... or is it counter-intuitively harder because it seems to be easier?

 

[xJOHNx]

Sukerkin, looking at your last paragraph reminded me of what one professor at uni always told me:

"We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge.--Rutherford D. Rogers"