Entering the world of blogging was daunting. I’ve never blogged before and the idea of writing down my thoughts and views on topics felt strange as I don’t typically do this even on social media. When Adrian Miles’ article “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning” mentioned that blogging is not something to be mastered in one class or a week, but instead something to get better at progressively, which is something that I believe in.
One thing I did find interesting in Sabine’s research was how massive the shift from text to image has been. It has obviously changed the way information is conveyed to its audience. I didn’t process how researchers would have had to study images to understand what worked with audiences and the way they should be used. The different approaches to platforms was something that also stood out to me. Each social media platform is slightly different in what they portray. For instance, Instagram is solely about images, where there is only a small space for a caption – yet what will be grabbing the viewer’s eye is the photo. Whereas on Facebook, text is something that can be used a lot more. You still see people posting only with text. I find that people who are not trying to promote anything will usually only use text, whereas companies will focus on an image, meme or video to grab the attention of the reader.
When companies are trying to grab your attention there will be a photo or video taking up the majority of the post to get you to click on the article. For example, news articles will usually have a video at the top of the article so that people do not have to read the article. I think it demonstrates how images and videos have taken over text and people would rather watch a video or photo then read the article.
I find it interesting how prevalent visual images are in our lives now and are a normal way of communication to audiences when it used to be based solely on text with a little image. However, now the image can be the main focus point and only a small amount of text. Over time it has switched.
