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Lisa YaszekRegents Professor Lisa Yaszek of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication was quoted by Bored Panda in an article about a Twitter page dedicated to stills from 1980s era broadcast news programs.
Yaskek discussed how the current nostalgia for 1980s analog news imagery reflects contemporary anxieties about the authenticity of reporting in an age of digital manipulation.
An excerpt:
“There are two main differences between current news screen grabs and those from the 1980s. First and foremost, current news screen grabs have much higher resolution rates: people and places are presented in clear detail with seemingly little inappropriate color shifting or pixilation,” she said.
“Second, the graphic design framing these images and presenting key information has become much more sophisticated as well. Subtitles that fade into the background or cover the people being filmed are replaced by small but easy-to-read ones that are placed in ways that complement rather than impede the visual narrative, while stock images are replaced by customized ones that match the verbal narrative presented in the story at hand.”
According to the professor, taken together, these differences demonstrate how greatly our visual recording and designing technologies have changed in the past 40 years. Moreover, they provide us with “ever greater control over the way we shape and share images—and ever greater anxiety about what people might do with that kind of control.”
