EVALUATING MESSAGES AND/OR IMAGES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXTS

REFLECTING DIFFERENT CULTURES

What are media messages?

 Media messages contain information and ideas that are shared to a large
audience of people.
 If these are not scrutinized properly, they may become agents of
misinformation and lead people to form wrong judgment and images on the
subject of the wrongly presented media message.
 By critically evaluating media messages, we ensure that the ideas presented
are accurate, relevant, and appropriate to be posted or shared with
everyone.

STRATEGIES OF EVALUATING MESSAGES

How do we evaluate messages?
 In order to evaluate whether a message is effective, we can ask ourselves a
series of questions which reflect a message's simplicity, specificity,
structure and stickiness.

FOUR MAIN QUALITIES FOR AN EFFECTIVE MESSAGE

1. SIMPLICITY
 In order to ensure that the messages have simplicity, we should ask
ourselves two questions:
- Is the purpose evident?
- Is the core message clear?

2. SPECIFICITY
 Refers to our choices of language and its usage on order to ensure language
is specific we may ask ourselves:
- Is language specific?
- Is language concrete, rather than abstract?
- Does it use words which have additional meanings and could perhaps be
misconstrued?
3. STRUCTURE
 Ideas should be organized and easy to follow.
- Does the messages have a STRUCTURE?
- Is there a more effective way to arrange the ideas?

4. STICKINESS
 The messages should display coherent and unity of ideas.
- Does the idea of the message flow smoothly?

"EVALUATING IMAGES"
 It is important to critically evaluate images you use for research. Study and
presentation images should be evaluated like any other source, such as
journal articles or books, to determine their quality, reliability and
appropriateness. Visual analysis is an important step in evaluating an
image and understanding its meaning.

Three steps of evaluating an image and these are:

1. Identifying Source
2. Interpret contextual information
3. Understand implications

ANALYZING THE TEXT/IMAGES

1. CONTENT ANALYSIS

 What do you see?

 What is the image all about?
 Are their people in the image?
 What are they doing?
 How are they presented?
 Can the image be looked at different ways?
 How effective is the image as a visual message?
 2. VISUAL ANALYSIS

 How is the image composed?

 What is in the background and what is in the foreground?
 What are the most important visual?

“IMAGE SOURCE"
• Where did you find the image?
• What information does the source provide about the origins of the image?
• Is the source reliable and trustworthy?
• Was the image found in an image database or was it being use in another context
to convey meaning?

"TECHNICAL QUALITY"
• Is the image large enough to suit your purpose?
• Are the color, light and balance, true?
• Is the image a quality digital image without pixelation or distortion?
• Is the image in a file format you can use?

“CONTEXTUAL INFO"
• What information accompanies the image?
• Does the text change how you see the image? How?
• Is the textual information intended to be factual an inform or is intended to
influence what and how you see?
• What kind of context does the information provide?
• Does it answer the questions where, how and why?
ANALYZING THE TEXT/IMAGES
To evaluate messages and images of different types of text reflecting different
culture the following should do:
1. Understand how the specified cultures live.
2. How the people in the specified group communicate each other.
3. Learn the symbolism of their culture.
4. Be aware in every detail such as artifact, language, and symbolism.
5. Get the meanings being addressed by the images
6. Get the important elements conveyed by the images
7. Getting the audience for the images

Additional tips in evaluating images;

1. Get the meanings being addressed by the images
2. Get the important elements conveyed by the images
3. Getting the audience for the images

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The interactions between non-verbal and verbal forms of communication, more in
particular the relations between visual symbols other than writing and the recording
of speech in writing, are important for the evaluation of both images and
texts.

CULTURAL TEXT
WHAT IS CULTURAL TEXT?
 Cultural texts are those objects, actions, and behaviors that reveal cultural
meanings. A photo is an image, but is also a cultural text, a picture with
cultural information beyond just the picture itself.
 Food and clothing also suggest cultural information, and it doesn't stop there.
The entire place and space, all of the people and interaction, all of the rituals
and rules and the various forms in which they manifest themselves, are
 "readable" texts, suitable for observation and analysis by the ethnographer
and writer.

CULTURAL TEXT
SAMPLE IDENTIFICATION OF A CULTURAL TEXT
 Take a look around the room or place you are in right now and briefly catalog
the people and/or things you see. These objects and actions are cultural
texts. In traditional American college classroom, there are some cultural texts
that are fairly standard: tables and chairs or desks; bright lighting; black or
white board to write on. Your class room may also be a 'smart room',
complete with a computer or LCD projector. There may be windows, one or
two doors. The floor may or may not be carpeted. There will also be the
presence of decoration-paint, tile, etc. A space may or may not be void of
people, who are also considered to be cultural texts. Their actions,
arrangements and demographics reflect how the space is used. What is in a
space and what happens in the space are all cultural texts that are available
for analysis. In other words, the space and objects with in it are "readable"
cultural texts. They say some thing about the purpose, needs, and perhaps
even values and beliefs of the people who occupy it.

CULTURAL TEXT
THE IDENTIFICATION OF CULTURAL TEXTS WILL BE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, BUT
THEY ARE FAIRLY EASY TO IDENTIFY ONCE YOU GET THE HANG OF IT.
 If your classroom is traditional, there will be places for people to sit, and
surfaces on which to write. What we may not all share is the form of these
seats and surfaces and the formation of these seats in the room. Look around
and take note: Are there individual desks, or tables and chairs? Can you move
seats into different arrangements? Are there computers? How are the desks
arranged? Where do the students sit? Where does the instructor sit/stand?

Returning to the instance of the class room, consider the following

questions:
CULTURAL TEXT
 Why are the desks arranged as they are? What does that say about the power
dynamic in the classroom?
 Why do you already know where to sit and what it means to sit in the front,
middle or back of the class room?
 Where have you chosen to sit?
 Where have you been assigned to sit? How has this experience affected your
feelings about school in general?
  What was your favorite/worst class in high school?
 How was the room arranged/decorated? Can you reach any conclusions about
the relevance of design or decoration?

DETECTING BIAS IN THE MEDIA

• Media bias is ubiquitous (everywhere) and not easy to detect. It is always useful to
compare several sources of information and, in doing so, it becomes clear that
media coverage is never completely objective.
• Media have tremendous power in setting cultural guidelines and in shaping
political discourse. It is essential that news media, along with other institutions, are
challenged to be fair and accurate.

Bias by omission
• Do the news stories you see show a balanced view of real life? What are the
characteristics they have in common? (e.g., Are they mostly about violence, famous
people, wealth?) Do some news sources include items that are ignored by others?

Bias by emphasis
• What stories are on the front page or “at the top of the hour?" Which stories get
the largest headlines, or the first and longest coverage on TV or radio? Consider
how this placement influences people's sense of what is important.

Bias by use of language

• The use of labels such as “terrorist,” “revolutionary,” or “freedom fighter” can
create completely different impressions of the same person or event.

Bias in photos
• Unflattering pictures can create bad impressions, and partial pictures of scenes
can completely change the context of an event.

Bias in the source

• An article about a cure for cancer written by a drug company is not the same as
an article by an independent researcher. Often, private companies, governments,
public relations firms, and political groups produce press releases to gain media
exposure and to influence the public.
Bias by headlines
• Some headlines can be deceptive, as their main purpose is to grab attention.
Many people read only the headlines, which can create a distorted sense of what is
really going on, or turn a non-event into a sensational event.

Bias by repetition
• The repetition of a particular event or idea can lead people to believe that it is
true, very widespread, and much more important than it really is.

Bias in numbers and statistics

• Of the following statements, which statistic would you use to try to convince
someone that the death penalty is a good idea?
- Almost 30% of those surveyed support the death penalty.
More than 70% of those surveyed are against the death penalty.

Bias in diversity
• What is the race and gender diversity at the news outlet you watch compared to
the communities it serves? How many producers, editors or decision-makers at
news outlets are women, people of color or openly gay or lesbian? In order to fairly
represent di] erent communities, news outlets should have members of those
communities in decision-making positions.

Bias from the point of view

• For example, many stories on parental notification of abortion emphasized the
"tough choice" confronting male politicians while quoting no women under 18-those
with the most at stake in the debate. Economics coverage usually looks at how
events impact stockholders rather than workers or consumers.
Demand that those affected by the issue have a voice in coverage.
DIFFERENT TYPE OF TEXT
 Narrative
 Descriptive
 Directive
 Expository
 Argumentative
(advertisements, editorials, sermons, shopping lists, poems, telephone books,
novels, etc)

Narrative texts
 Narrative texts have to do with real-world events and time. They may be
fictional (fairy tales, novels) or non-fictional (newspaper report). They are
characterised by a sequencing of events expressed by dynamic verbs and by
adverbials such as “and then”, “first”, “second”, “third” Example: First we
packed our bags and then we called a taxi. After that we... etc.

Descriptive texts
 Descriptive texts are concerned with the location of persons and things in
space. They will tell us what lies to the right or left, in the background or
foreground, or they will provide background information which, perhaps, sets
the stage for narration. It is immaterial whether a description is more
technical-objective or more impressionistic- subjective. 6 Descriptive texts
State or positional verbs plus adverbial expressions are employed in
descriptions

Examples:
1) The operation panel is located on the right-hand side at the rear;
2) New Orleans lies on the Mississippi

Directive texts
 Directive texts are concerned with concrete future activity.
 Central to these texts are imperatives (Hand me the paper) or forms which
substitute for them, such as polite questions (Would you hand me the paper?)
or suggestive remarks (I wonder what the paper says about the weather).
 Narrative, descriptive and directive texts have grammatical forms associated
with them which may be expanded to form sequences of a textual nature
  They are all centered around real-world events and things. In contrast,
expository and argumentative texts are cognitively oriented, as they are
concerned with explanation and persuasion, which are both mental
processes.

Expository texts
 Expository texts identify and characterize phenomena. They include text
forms such as definitions, explications, summaries and many types of essay.
 Expository texts may be subjective (essay) or objective (summary,
explication, definition) may be analytical (starting from a concept and then
characterizing its parts; e.g. definitions) or synthetic (recounting
characteristics and ending with an appropriate concept or conclusion; e.g.
summaries) are characterized by state verbs and epistemic modals (Pop
music has a strong rhythmic beat; Texts may consist of one or more
sentences) or by verbs indicating typical activities or qualities
 "Always be critical and aware as you read, watch, or listen to mass media.
Keep alert for these many forms of bias."

Language Register
Refers to the level of formality in how we speak or write. It depends on the
audience, topic, and situation. Using the right register helps in clear and effective
communication.
Types of Language Register
PUBLIC
1. Frozen or Static Register- a fixed, unchanging way of speaking or writing.
Examples: Prayers, National Anthem, Bill of rights.
2. Formal Register- a structured and professional way of speaking, used in
serious situations.
Example: Research Paper, Business Presentation, Interviews.
3. Consultative Register- a respectful and professional way of speaking used
when asking for or giving advice.
Example: Teacher and Students, Doctor and Patient, Lawyer and Client.
PRIVATE
4. Casual Register- a relaxed and informal way of speaking, used with friends
and peers.
Example: Talking with friends, Informal letters or emails.
5. Intimate Register- a private and personal way of speaking used between
close people.
Example: Romantic partners, Secret Jokes.