ABSTRACT
The chapter opens with defining how the immediacy of an image affects both individuals and groups. Starting with common metaphors of “plain seeing” in language, we discuss the ways that images and certain systems of visuality become naturalized under conditions of advertising, propaganda, and fake news. We present the Hindenburg disaster as an example of how group trauma based on visual centering of events can have mass media effects. The chapter goes on to highlight the means by which advertising and product branding generate specific kinds of image signifiers that are removed from their grounding in politics and ideology but retain a kind of persuasive force, that is, Barthesian mythology. The chapter also addresses the growing role of visuality in social media, both through its motivation of political protest via arousal images, and in the ways that images of crowds and slogans create political motivation to join a cause. Finally, we discuss the dimensions and mechanisms of fake news and misinformation in visual replication by trolls.
