Every picture conveys some meaning. According to Jenna Pack, pictures have power, that is why it is necessary to understand and analyse them.
The picture for analyses in made by the campaign called Crisis Relief Singapore. It is apparent that the audience of the picture is those people on social networks who ‘like’ and ‘share’ images on the Internet, and nothing but this. The audience is indicated by the thumbs up sign that is usual for such social network as Facebook.
The context of the picture is people in need. The boy in the picture is dying and there is no one to help him. Discovering more information about the Crisis Relief Singapore, I got to know that in the series of pictures with thumbs up the people who suffered from war, earthquakes and flood are depicted.
The purpose of the picture is to attract the attention to the fake sympathy of the social networks users who pretend that they care, but actually, they do nothing at all to change the situation. One more purpose is to involve indifferent people into volunteering.
The tone of the designer of this picture is ironical, I believe. Besides, in the picture there is a text that proves my point of view. It says ‘Liking isn’t helping’. It is the absolute truth. To like a picture on a social network and to help people depicted in that picture in the real world are two completely different things.
The location of the text also matters, Jenna Pack states. As a rule people tend to scan text from left to right, so it is obvious that the designer wanted to direct our attention to that message.
The color of the picture also plays very important role in conveying meaning. The analysed picture is black and white that is a kind of depressing. To sum up, it should be stressed that the picture has very strong rhetorical effects.
Works Cited
Pack, Jenna. Breaking down an image. Writing Commons. n. d. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.
