Blog Imagery

Reflecting on the visual rhetoric of blogs brings you to the ways in which each blog makes an attempt in trying to persuade. In How to Write a Misleading Headline, venture capitalist Fred Wilson chooses not to bore the quick moving reader. Instead, Wilson uses an appealing graph from a credible source to support his point. This is largely what the visual medium lets us do as bloggers – display credible information and get our points across quickly. Wilson shows us he is able to cut through the media spin, and get to credible NVCA data. He also allows the reader to speedily move to what is significant about his message and draws interest to getting at the analytic text surrounding his concrete image.

The colorful and emotive visual rhetoric stands out in a way that text can not and ensures a consistent image to those that view it. If you are going to contest Wilson's information, bring it up with NVCA. This addresses the challenge Meredith Badger brings to attention in Visual Blogs in stating that besides the imagery in a blog “there is nothing else to act as a means of verification.” Imagery concretizes the digital space and develops a context in reality.

Moving beyond mechanical reproduction, digital proliferation has mostly destroyed what Walter Benjamin calls the unique “aura” of any work of art. The monopoly is gone. Without its cult value, we are able to politicize any piece of imagery and use it to convince and persuade. The commingling of the visual with the textual shouldn’t be neglected in any awesome blog.