Media Monday - Truth and Falsity in Images

Something I learned while teaching my Media Literacy course is that our minds have a much more difficult time dealing with images than the written word as there is no truth or falsity in an image. Which is why much of our modern advertising (and now memes) are image-based rather than text based.An example:Almost every modern car ad implies that by owning a new car we will gain freedom.

If this was simply written, our brains would immediately question what we are reading: But the car costs $60,000? And then I have to get insurance? And a license? And put gas in it? And I have to follow the rules of the road, etc.. And pretty quickly our brains negotiate that this statement is, in fact, false. Although a car can give us the freedom to drive ourselves places, it actually creates less freedom in our lives as we now have more financial burdens.

But when it is presented as an image (picture a car sitting on top of a mountain or driving over rocks with no other cars around) our brains have a much harder time negotiating truth or falsity. This is because the image itself is likely true (AI is changing this) - someone actually put the vehicle in this spot and took a picture of it. And this, combined with the ideas ingrained in us that “seeing is believing” and “the camera never lies” makes it very hard for our brains to conclude that the image and its message are false…even though we know that we will never use our vehicle in this way. And neither did the people who staged the image. 

Keep this in mind the next time you feel moved by an image. Even the images that I take:).