VISUAL MEDIA
Abstract
With the rise in the number of people that have access to the internet, the number of visual articles available today has significantly increased. This has been due to the ease in which one can distribute whatever material they wish to distribute over the internet at no cost. However, many people forget more about the copyright law. The law bars anyone from distributing any material that is not one’s original work. The increase in the number of visuals available to the public has significantly been contributed to by an increase in the number of social site users. Here, anyone interested can easily share videos of whatever nature they can. Conversely, an increase in the number of visual materials all comes down to technological advancement.
However, not all visual images are open for criticism. Visuals come in handy when it comes to advertising. From a scientific point of view, something learnt through sight is rather hard to forget. With this in mind, commercial businesses use visual images to constantly advertise their products. This method of advertising is way better than the use of lengthy paragraphs to explain to the customer why he should use their product and not that of a competitor. In this case, visual images are of benefits since they help increase the sales made by firms by assisting the firms appeal to more customers through the use of advertisements. This is one advantage that visual images have (Lester 2013).
On the other hand, visual images also have their cons. The availability of visuals with so much ease also comes at a cost. Not all visual articles can be said to have a positive impact on the public. On the contrary, some offer high contribution in the degradation of society ethics. Some of the visual advertisements made are usually too sexually provocative which makes it uncomfortable to watch a commercial with one’s ten year old son or daughter beside you (Lester 2013). This is one of the challenges associated with the widespread availability of visuals. The other universally known challenge associated with an increase in ease in which visuals are available is the increase in the number of pornographic material on the internet today. This further adds to the continued degradation of values in the society.
As earlier quoted the presence of social; sites make it easier for people to share whatever material hey wish to, in some cases copyrighted material. This has landed some people into much trouble with the authority in the case that the copyright holder files a complaint. The legal implication of defying the copyright laws includes compensation to the copyright holder and in some cases the offender may not even be able to raise the amount needed for compensation. The offenders would even at times find themselves serving jail terms. In other cases, some people post images of other people or their photos that might somehow seem irrespective. This, in some cases, ends up as a lawsuit.
It would be of great help if anyone wishing to use visual communicators first understood whom his audience (Waggoner 2003), this would save the harm of giving the right message to people whom the communicator did not intend to give. The making of visual communicators with ethics of the society in mind would help curb the problem too. In other cases, proper understanding of copyright laws would be a solution to having lawsuits that one could easily avoid.
References
Lester P. (2013) 6th ed. Visual Communication: Images with Messages. USA: Cengage Learning.
Waggoner G. (2003). Images in the scientific article: Decisions in Visual communication. Science editor, 26(5).Pg 155.
