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Images play a big role in how events are perceived. Whenever there's a natural disaster you tend to see all of the worst examples, even if they're not fully rep

Images play a big role in how events are perceived. Whenever there's a natural disaster you tend to see all of the worst examples, even if they're not fully representative of the event. But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people to take these events seriously, since they can negatively affect so many people. Otherwise people might look at images where some things look normal and think that those who were most affected are overstating the impact of the event. Another example that comes to mind is the 2020 protests. If I looked at how conservative news was reporting on events, it seemed utterly chaotic. But I had multiple friends that were present at many local events, and they were all perfectly safe.

hammock 3y ago
Why have you been downvoted?
munificent 3y ago
As someone who has experienced several serious floods, this is my favorite example of imagery's ability to craft a reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4 Floodwaters tend to stir up a lot of dirt and mud, so the water is usually totally opaque. That makes it very hard to tell how deep it is. A lot of overhead views of flooded neighborhoods look completely disastrous, but in reality it's just a foot or two of water that will just go away once the drains can handle it. But, sometimes, flooding really is severe and the damage is monumental. But it can be hard to distinguish those from imagery. Every picture of a flood looks biblical.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > Is your oar hitting ground I thought it was really weird the way she was paddling but that line at the end of the video is probably the explanation.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  People also completely underestimate how much force flowing water has. It's hard enough to walk in waist-deep water when it's still. Somehow they see a few feet of rushing water and they think "hey, I'm gonna drive my car through that"
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    Arizona has a law, aptly titled "stupid motorist law" or "idiot's law", which specifically addresses this. Yet people still drive into flooded roads and get swept downstream on a regular basis because "it's just a couple inches of water".
- Goronmon 3y ago
  A couple feet of water is still disastrous though. You're insurance most likely doesn't cover it and you could be left with tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage easily.
  - munificent 3y ago
    It really depends. In my neighborhood in Louisiana, most yards sloped down to the street. So when the flood was a couple of feet at its deepest, most houses were still fully above the waterline. It's just that the streets were impassable and you needed a boat to get around.
rexpop 3y ago
If you are interested in images' role in public perception of events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of Others," published in 2003: > To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the beginning of the recent Balkan wars, the same photographs of children killed in the shelling of a village were passed around at both Serb and Croat propaganda briefings. Alter the caption, and the children’s deaths could be used and reused. > a single photograph or filmstrip claims to represent exactly what was before the camera’s lens. A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. But evidence of what? > Indeed, the very notion of atrocity, of war crime, is associated with the expectation of photographic evidence. Such evidence is, usually, of something posthumous. > And, of course, atrocities that are not secured in our minds by well-known photographic images, or of which we simply have had very few images—the total extermination of the Herero people in Namibia decreed by the German colonial administration in 1904; the Japanese onslaught in China, notably the massacre of nearly four hundred thousand, and the rape of eighty thousand, Chinese in December 1937, the so-called Rape of Nanking; the rape of some one hundred and thirty thousand women and girls (ten thousand of whom committed suicide) by victorious Soviet soldiers unleashed by their commanding officers in Berlin in 1945—seem more remote. These are memories that few have cared to claim. > Shock can become familiar. Shock can wear off. Even if it doesn’t, one can not look. People have means to defend themselves against what is upsetting—in this instance, unpleasant information for those wishing to continue to smoke. This seems normal, that is, adaptive. As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can become habituated to the horror of certain images.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. While this is mostly a good piece of writing, in the real world handmade images (and handwritten notes) are, like photographs, potentially evidence, and the issues raised with photographs are the reasons both photographs and hand-written/hand-drawn items (and all other physical items) as evidence tend to demand supporting (and admit opposing) testimonial and physical evidence of provenance (and, the physical evidence offered for this purpose has the same features, such that ultimately, it all rests on testimonial evidence of provenance.) I also don't think the first parr of the sentence is true: pictures may be supposed to show, but pictures have been noted for their evocative power long before this piece was written—pictures are in certaim circumstances understood to show, and under other and frequently overlapping circumstances to evoke; there is certainly a common danger in mistaking evocative power for also indicating informative power, but few anywhere have denied the existence of the evocative power of photography.
yeetyoteyoten 3y ago
> But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people to take these events seriously, since they can negatively affect so many people. Overreacting can have equally bad outcomes, I think. Social isolation sanctioned by pandemic era school lockdowns left me with depression, social anxiety and suicidal ideations - none of which I have managed to fix so far. And I know I'm not alone with this in my age group (in high-school at the start of the pandemic). Now, I think the resulting number of suicides does not reach the amount of people saved by the countermeasures in total, but it's nevertheless something to consider. (Well, but it's much harder to find a direct correlation in the first place, so really who knows.) (Re-reading your comment, I now realize that maybe I was completely missing your point, in which case I'm sorry.)
jrpt 3y ago
The 2020 protests were either dangerous or ok depending on where you were and the time of day. Minneapolis had a lot of damage and someone was even burned to death in their store. US insurance costs were over $1B.

hammock 3y ago

Why have you been downvoted?

munificent 3y ago

As someone who has experienced several serious floods, this is my favorite example of imagery's ability to craft a reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4 Floodwaters tend to stir up a lot of dirt and mud, so the water is usually totally opaque. That makes it very hard to tell how deep it is. A lot of overhead views of flooded neighborhoods look completely disastrous, but in reality it's just a foot or two of water that will just go away once the drains can handle it. But, sometimes, flooding really is severe and the damage is monumental. But it can be hard to distinguish those from imagery. Every picture of a flood looks biblical.

lesuorac 3y ago
> Is your oar hitting ground I thought it was really weird the way she was paddling but that line at the end of the video is probably the explanation.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
People also completely underestimate how much force flowing water has. It's hard enough to walk in waist-deep water when it's still. Somehow they see a few feet of rushing water and they think "hey, I'm gonna drive my car through that"
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  Arizona has a law, aptly titled "stupid motorist law" or "idiot's law", which specifically addresses this. Yet people still drive into flooded roads and get swept downstream on a regular basis because "it's just a couple inches of water".
Goronmon 3y ago
A couple feet of water is still disastrous though. You're insurance most likely doesn't cover it and you could be left with tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage easily.
- munificent 3y ago
  It really depends. In my neighborhood in Louisiana, most yards sloped down to the street. So when the flood was a couple of feet at its deepest, most houses were still fully above the waterline. It's just that the streets were impassable and you needed a boat to get around.

rexpop 3y ago

If you are interested in images' role in public perception of events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of Others," published in 2003: > To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the beginning of the recent Balkan wars, the same photographs of children killed in the shelling of a village were passed around at both Serb and Croat propaganda briefings. Alter the caption, and the children’s deaths could be used and reused. > a single photograph or filmstrip claims to represent exactly what was before the camera’s lens. A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. But evidence of what? > Indeed, the very notion of atrocity, of war crime, is associated with the expectation of photographic evidence. Such evidence is, usually, of something posthumous. > And, of course, atrocities that are not secured in our minds by well-known photographic images, or of which we simply have had very few images—the total extermination of the Herero people in Namibia decreed by the German colonial administration in 1904; the Japanese onslaught in China, notably the massacre of nearly four hundred thousand, and the rape of eighty thousand, Chinese in December 1937, the so-called Rape of Nanking; the rape of some one hundred and thirty thousand women and girls (ten thousand of whom committed suicide) by victorious Soviet soldiers unleashed by their commanding officers in Berlin in 1945—seem more remote. These are memories that few have cared to claim. > Shock can become familiar. Shock can wear off. Even if it doesn’t, one can not look. People have means to defend themselves against what is upsetting—in this instance, unpleasant information for those wishing to continue to smoke. This seems normal, that is, adaptive. As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can become habituated to the horror of certain images.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. While this is mostly a good piece of writing, in the real world handmade images (and handwritten notes) are, like photographs, potentially evidence, and the issues raised with photographs are the reasons both photographs and hand-written/hand-drawn items (and all other physical items) as evidence tend to demand supporting (and admit opposing) testimonial and physical evidence of provenance (and, the physical evidence offered for this purpose has the same features, such that ultimately, it all rests on testimonial evidence of provenance.) I also don't think the first parr of the sentence is true: pictures may be supposed to show, but pictures have been noted for their evocative power long before this piece was written—pictures are in certaim circumstances understood to show, and under other and frequently overlapping circumstances to evoke; there is certainly a common danger in mistaking evocative power for also indicating informative power, but few anywhere have denied the existence of the evocative power of photography.

yeetyoteyoten 3y ago

> But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people to take these events seriously, since they can negatively affect so many people. Overreacting can have equally bad outcomes, I think. Social isolation sanctioned by pandemic era school lockdowns left me with depression, social anxiety and suicidal ideations - none of which I have managed to fix so far. And I know I'm not alone with this in my age group (in high-school at the start of the pandemic). Now, I think the resulting number of suicides does not reach the amount of people saved by the countermeasures in total, but it's nevertheless something to consider. (Well, but it's much harder to find a direct correlation in the first place, so really who knows.) (Re-reading your comment, I now realize that maybe I was completely missing your point, in which case I'm sorry.)

jrpt 3y ago

The 2020 protests were either dangerous or ok depending on where you were and the time of day. Minneapolis had a lot of damage and someone was even burned to death in their store. US insurance costs were over $1B.