Visual Images of Organizations: a Study into the Production of Meaning

Today visual images constitute one of the main channels of communication between public and organizations. But what do we know about ways in which visual messages are perceived and understood? What role do authors, viewers, context of viewing and images play in the production of meaning? What are the methods of visual analysis? This book addresses these questions on both theoretical and empirical levels. It takes issue with traditional semiotic approaches which assume that we make sense of the visual in a rational and disembodied manner and that meanings are exchanged between authors and viewers of images in a unidirectional way. This study suggests that the nature of visual sense-making is far more complex. It is argued, with reference to Merleau-Ponty and Bakhtin¿s phenomenological writings, that vision represents a multi-directional and experiential engagement with the world, and that meanings arise in an embodied, contextualised and profoundly social interaction between beings and things. These propositions are further explored through a detailed analysis of advertising images. This book is of interest to anyone who wants to understand how visual communication works.