West Visayas State University 2022

Unit 6: Communication in the

Digital Culture

Introduction:
Educators today are working hard to develop capacities to integrate
technology and learning, which emphasize areas including technology, pedagogy,
human communication, and teaching strategies. Such efforts are now opening doors
beyond the classroom to create virtual communities for lifelong learning and
professional development. We see this in a variety of projects and programs that
provide such things as online discussion groups and cross-cultural school
development. One of the growing challenges with this expanded use of ICT is the
emerging dimensionality of integrating technology into the daily fabric of life long
learning. We are no longer talking just about course development to serve individual
learning. Today, ICT is being used to connect people and organizations across
cultures to promote, among other things, democracy through professional and
educational development. This shift from the classroom to open learning spaces adds
new dimensions to the development, use and integration of technology in education
and professional development.
This unit the digital culture that reflects the multi-dimensionality of ICT in
education: pedagogy, communication, technology and organizational systems.
Through the creation of cultural webs, motivated by humans, and assisted by
technology, online communication has the possibility to shape a collective space for
cross cultural connections that support a shared democracy.

Learning Outcomes:
1. Exhibited understanding about the Digital Culture
2. Identified, described and analyzed different roles of visual communication
3. Created effective visual communication

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Activate Prior Knowledge

Let’s check how much you know of the different Applications online. Identify each
icon below and write your answer before each number.

_________________1.

_________________2.

_________________3.

_________________4.

_________________5.

_________________6.

_________________7.

_________________8.

_________________9.

_________________10.

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Checkpoint
Did you match right? Check out the answer key below.

LinkedIn is an online platform that connects the world's professionals.

A complete LinkedIn profile will summarize your professional
experience to your connections, current and future employers, and
recruiters.

Goodreads' stated mission is "to help people find and share books they
love ... [and] to improve the process of reading and learning throughout
the world." Goodreads addressed what publishers call the
"discoverability' problem" by guiding consumers in the digital age to find
books they might want to read.

The Blogger mobile app allows you to post, edit, save, and view
your blog posts. You can publish posts from anywhere, anytime with
the app. You can save your post as a draft and edit it on a computer
later, or edit your draft from the app on your computer.

Infogr.am – Create & Publish Interactive &

Engaging Charts / Graphs. Infogr.am lets you
create and publish beautiful visualizations of your
data. ... You can click-and-drag or touch-and-drag
around data values in the charts to see their real-time effect on other values and
understand all intricacies.

Google Classroom is part of the G Suite for Education

(formerly known as Google Apps for Education) package that
includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar and other apps.
It’s targeted to teachers and students in both K-12 and higher
education markets.

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Zoom is a powerful cloud video conferencing platform that allows you

to host meetings with hundreds of participants. Using Zoom,
educators can share lesson plans, give instruction, swap files with
students, and communicate directly with the group or individuals via
chat, all within the app.

Khan Academy is a free education app for both students and

teachers. Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional
videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower
learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.
This classroom learning app helps finding educational resources for math, reading,
writing, science and more.

With the Quizlet app, you can easily find resources for any subject
at any level. Revise for any subject with fun and interactive
flashcards, games and diagrams. Quizlet makes it easy to discover
and create study materials for languages, history, science and more.

Edublogs lets you easily create & manage student & teacher
blogs, quickly customize designs and include videos, photos &
podcasts – it’s safe, easy and secure. It is a growing library of over
80 hands-on Science lessons that is great for home and the
classroom.

Evernote is an impressive organizational app for teachers. Its

limitless uses range from planning a course to delivering a lesson
plan to capturing feedback after class. It allows you to take notes,
capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders and
makes these notes completely searchable, whether you are at school, at home, or on
the go.

Are you done? Now read through the lessons for this unit in the next few pages.

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Acquire New Knowledge

A. Digital Culture Defined

Scholars argue whether we can understand what the spread of digital
networks will mean for relatively well-established cultures in the tangible world, or
predict with any certainty how cultures will evolve on digital platforms. There are two
basic schools of thought. The first argues that existing cultures might find
themselves essentially recreated in digital form as more and more life experiences,
from the exciting to the mundane, play out in digital spaces. The second school of
thought posits that the dominant digital culture emerging now is a separate culture
unto itself.

It seems likely that neither version of these imagined forms of digital culture
will dominate; instead, we will likely see a combination of the two. Parts of existing
culture will appear online as they do in the physical world and parts of digital culture
will seem completely new, previously unfathomable because they could not or would
not appear in the tangible world.

Commuters on the Washington DC Metro use their mobile phones beneath an

ad stating, “It Begins with Bonjour.” Photo by Craig Moe, CCBY. Source: Flickr.
Before we delve in with prognostications about where digital culture is headed, let us
first define our terms. Digital culture refers to the knowledge, beliefs, and practices
of people interacting on digital networks that may recreate tangible-world cultures or
create new strains of cultural thought and practice native to digital networks.

For example, an online fandom and a real-world fan club are both made up of
people who are geographically separated but share a common interest. If a fan club
were to “go online,” networked communication platforms might make the experience
better than it was in the physical world. Before the advent of the internet, most fan
clubs produced a newsletter, offered connections with pen pals, and provided early
opportunities to buy tickets and merchandise. Online, fans can create deeper
relationships with one another. They can connect and communicate on official
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channels or make their own unofficial groups where they need not communicate
through a central authority or gatekeeper. Fan and star interactions can be direct,
one-on-one interactions on multiple social media channels. There may be an official,
organized fan group, but many other avenues can appear on relatively open
platforms with few rules.

The cultural product at the core of a fandom might still be a “legacy media”
product. Legacy media are any media platforms that existed prior to the
development of massive digital networks. Yes, there are people who are “Instagram
famous” or “YouTube” famous, but the biggest stars in our cultural world still have
many ties to legacy media. Musicians, film stars and comic book heroes come to
mind. What other types of “legacy media” stars have huge online fandoms?

Online fandoms may simultaneously expect less centralized authority over the
fan experience and more direct access to their heroes. They often expect to see
transparency during the creative process, such as Instagram or Twitter posts with
“secret” messages for longtime followers or behind-the-scenes videos as albums and
movies are made. Fandoms might demand to hear key information first or to have
special access via social media.

Similar things could be said of fan clubs in the age of snail mail. Essential
elements of the culture of fandom — gaining access to artists and finding friends in a
community — have not changed as much in kind as they have in degree.
Is this an example of the transition of an existing cultural form (the fan club)
to digital environments, or is online fandom something truly different from a snail
mail fan club? This is a good question to debate in the classroom.

It is worth noting that there are also niche fandoms that probably would not
exist without the aid of digital networks. With virtually unlimited communication
space, there is room for incredibly rarified fan groups to form on platforms such as
Tumblr, and they are not always socially positive communities. In many cases of
hyper-specific fandoms, it is difficult to argue that these cultures existed in the
physical world and simply “moved online.” Being digitally networked is what makes it

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possible to find people with particularly narrow shared interests, for better and for
worse.

Digital Dynamic
Even with the presence of niche online groups, digital culture cannot
currently be separated from the influence of physical-world cultures. We can say two
things about the relationship between online and physical-world cultures at this time.
First, the growth of interaction on digital networks influences “traditional” cultures.
Second, longstanding cultural traditions are influencing digital culture as it takes
shape. The ethics and norms established in the physical world shape our views about
behavior and values in digital networks. The term norm refers to a behavioral
standard. Mutual influences of what is considered “normal” in online behavior and
well established physical world norms are emerging in a dynamic fashion. Sometimes
they clash.

One example is online dating. Dating in real life (IRL) is changing as more
and more people use dating apps and websites. Previously, dating was limited to the
people you were likely to meet. You could meet friends of friends. You could meet
people at school, at parties, at bars or on blind dates. Your options were limited
geographically and by how outgoing you were, how much time you wanted to spend
looking, and who you trusted to set you up. The personal ads in newspapers were
often considered sad places for losers. Using a mass medium to find your true love
was often considered a risky last resort.

When online dating first became available, it was often compared to posting
and perusing digital personal ads. This was a cultural perception based on previous
experiences, behavior and expectations from a pre-Internet culture.

Over the course of approximately ten years (1998-2008), what once was
considered odd, creepy or desperate in many parts of the Western world came to be
considered commonplace. Apps and sites like OkCupid, Tinder, Match.com and
eHarmony have millions of users. Culturally, many of us have accepted this new

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digital form of dating. It’s not for everyone, but online dating does not carry the
stigma it once did.

Even Tinder, which has a reputation as a “hook-up” app, maintains popularity

and cultural significance as it is referenced often on other media platforms.

Whatever it may be in a given culture, sexual morality still exists, even if new
technologies make hooking up easier and new capabilities challenge old norms of
what dating should be.

This is the dynamic at the heart of this chapter. Digital technology can
influence knowledge, beliefs and especially practices around dating. This can, in turn,
shape the way people think about dating in general, not just in digital environments.
The “old” cultural norms and morals can still be applied to judge those who use
digital apps for casual hookups, but the new culture can push back, so to speak, and
change how people think about dating even if they never use dating apps
themselves.

We have discussed how the digital culture and physical world culture dynamic
functions, but we have not yet defined digital culture. For that, we must look to
scholars who have spent years trying to pinpoint what emergent digital culture
seems to be.

Individualization, Post-nationalism, and Globalization

We turn to Mark Deuze, a scholar from the University of Amsterdam, for a
complete definition. He seeks to provide a preliminary definition of “digital culture” in
his 2006 article, “Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal
Components of a Digital Culture.”

In his analysis of academic literature, Deuze finds that scholars often make
assumptions when trying to explain how digital culture works. The main he identifies
is the idea that culture moves to digital networks more or less intact. There was, a

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decade ago, a lack of explanation about what happens to culture in digital

environments.

How much might culture change when certain practices move online? How
often can existing cultural beliefs and expectations be transferred intact? Deuze does
not think digital culture is merely a recreation of physical world culture in online
spaces, but he does not have a good answer for what has been emerging. He
analyzes independent media sites, blogs and radical online media outlets to see what
these new forms of communication demonstrate about digital culture.

Individualization
Deuze finds individualization in blogs most frequently written by one person
and focused on a specific topic or small geographical region. Individualism, as it is
used here, refers not only to an individual’s ability to act as their own publisher
online but also to a social condition in which individuals are free from government
control. It means that even in authoritarian nations such as North Korea, Russia,
China and Iran that try to control the behavior of their citizens, individuals may seek
freedom of expression on the internet, although it comes at a greater risk.
Beyond Deuze’s observations, evidence of individualism online comes from
partisan news sites such as The Drudge Report and HuffPost. Both are named for
individual founders. They are digital mass media outlets that started largely as
personal points of view.
The importance of individualized expression on social media is clear. We
appear as individuals on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. This
increases our reach. Each of us can potentially connect with every other individual on
a given social media platform, but these platforms also raise questions about
surveillance and privacy.

Digital Individualism vs. Privacy

Eric Schmidt once said about online privacy and Google, “If you have
something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in
the first place.” While this might make sense in a free society, there are many places

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in the world — North Korea for example — where government surveillance can utilize
corporate invasions of privacy to crack down on dissent and severely limit freedom.
Suppose someone living in North Korea would like to use a social media
channel such as Twitter to connect with like-minded people without government
officials finding out. Should Twitter protect those users? What if a state threatens
legal action or violence against Twitter employees? Would social media channels give
up their users?

There is a difference between government surveillance (that is, state-

sanctioned data gathering and analysis on massive scales) and corporate data
aggregation for targeted marketing purposes. Usually, by accepting the Terms and
Conditions of apps and web services, you opt in to having your data stored,
crunched and analyzed by corporations. Legally, you are responsible for that
decision. Technically, the data gathering platform is not supposed to identify you as
an individual, but so-called “safe harbor” laws can be ineffectual.

Should Google protect your searches and refuse to divulge information about
your habits to governments, even if they share that data with other companies for
marketing purposes? Should Google give you a way to hide your online activity? Is
there a way for the liberty-loving Southeast Asian to have his privacy protected while
still enabling Western governments to watch out for terrorists? These questions
relate to larger issues of freedom and individualism in digital culture.

Throughout its history, the United States of America has taken pride in its
First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights as guarantees of liberty. After the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, many Americans accepted new levels of scrutiny,
particularly in digital environments. Support for strong leaders increased until very
recently. Concerns about the global rise of authoritarianism have people questioning
government surveillance and corporate surveillance as they may limit our ability to
engage as individuals in digital culture.

Eric Schmidt’s statement implies that privacy in digital networks is limited.

This sentiment is echoed by Mark Zuckerberg, who has suggested that privacy is

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dead. What this means is that physical world behavior is expected to adapt to the
demands of digital culture because the capabilities of digital culture also carry with
them unique risks that we are not necessarily adapted to deal with.
Our experience with the anarchy of online mass communication platforms is
quite limited. As we learn what government surveillance and corporate invasions of
privacy are capable of, it may continue to deeply affect our physical world behavior.

Many would agree with the sentiment, “If you do nothing wrong, you have
nothing to worry about,” but even advocates for a more open digital society want
their privacy. Zuckerberg bought several properties around his house to keep his
physical location secure. Eric Schmidt does not want people to know where he lives.
He generally does not invite the public into his private life, and, one might assume,
does not want people to examine why his former wife said she felt like a “piece of
luggage” when married to him. Such information about Schmidt’s personal life is
easy to find online and could be used against him, but should we care? Does it
matter in the broader cultural sense?

This text argues that privacy does matter. The vast majority of us are not
using digital platforms to break laws or to interact in negative ways with others and
yet we still have aspects of ourselves that we would like to remain private. Has a
parent or guardian ever snooped on your Facebook account or followed your
Instagram? We have incredible freedoms and amazing digital communication
capabilities as individuals living our lives in the new digital culture. It comes with a
price we have yet to grasp.

Terms and Conditions

The film Terms and Conditions May Apply details the ways our private
information, such as our emails and texts, can easily be related to our public
information on social networks.
The filmmakers note that the knowledge and hardware needed to snoop on
people are bought and sold all over the world and are often unregulated.

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Are we becoming more open because of the ways social media function? Is
there anything wrong with that? Are we surrendering our privacy in ways that cannot
be undone?

One of the major cultural challenges of the network society will be to deal
with people in power who would like to use our information against us as a means of
control. It has already happened in some of the countries where the Arab Spring
revolutions took place (Egypt, for one).

You never know what you might need to protest in the future, but we’re
beginning to see tools deployed to pre-empt protest and other acts of dissent. What
this means for our efforts to define digital culture is that digital culture can free us as
individuals, but it can also imprison us.

We can use the internet and smartphones to help us to get questions

answered and to draw attention to ourselves in good ways. We can coordinate with
others for fundraisers and to have parties. Digital communication networks are
amazingly sophisticated tools that can help us connect as individuals to form groups
to celebrate all sorts of interests, political and otherwise.

On the other hand, if individuals believe they have no privacy, digital

networks could become virtual wastelands where innovative collaboration is hindered
and where corporate commercial speech and government surveillance dominate.

Capitalism depends on risk-taking, and if you kill risk-taking online, you have
hindered the entrepreneurialism that the network society offers. We scholars will
study for decades to come how individual behavior changes and how relationships
morph in a digital culture that discourages behavior we want to keep private while
simultaneously encouraging levels of sharing that border on exhibitionism. How can
we maintain privacy and gain attention, which is so often the currency of the open
Internet? This is an interesting dilemma that arises in an individualistic digital culture.

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Globalization
Digital culture, Deuze posits, reflects a globalized or globalizing world.
Behaviors, interests, and relationships cross international boundaries. The economic
structure of digital networks, including the mass media system, is global. For
example, multinational conglomerate corporations tend to dominate the media
industry, not just in the United States but around the world. Books, academic articles
and simple infographics show that most mass media companies fall under the
ownership of large corporate firms. It is not accurate to say this represents all media
or that “the media” are being controlled, but it is accurate to say a significant level of
influence can be attributed to a handful of media corporations in most developed
parts of the world.

Mass media consumers should be aware of the environment in which media

products are produced, but this is not to say that the globalization of mass media is
always a negative thing. When it comes to culture, globalization has its supporters.
Here is a site in English about K-pop music. The music comes from Korea, but the
fan base is spread worldwide, and the site can reach a global audience only because
of the global nature of digital networks. It works only because computer servers are
connected by wires all over the globe to make this bit of culture, like many others,
available to the entire globe.

There exists a global point of view in both the physical world and in digital
culture which is open to all kinds of cultural production as long as it is interesting,
funny and shows great talent. There are videos that go viral globally, although it is
not always clear why. (If we had the formula, we’d include it here.) All we can say at
this time is that you can reach the world with any online message and, for whatever
reason, some things are globally likable and “shareable.”

A Place Called Gangnam

Humanity’s recently developed ability to develop a globalized point of view
and to establish a common digital culture is the reason you have heard (and likely
tired) of “Gangnam Style.” Ironically, PSY, who performs the song, is kind of an anti-

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pop star within Korea. The song makes fun of the country’s higher class, a
conspicuously wealthy subculture from a place called the Gangnam District. But PSY
is a global success. He is popular, many argue, because he is quite funny and
because he is not the prototypical K-pop hero. He comes from a particular national
cultural tradition, but he also transcends it by being absurd. Thus, as a distinctly
individual performer, he personifies a type of post-nationalism and the globalization
of digital culture.
Individualism, post-nationalism and globalization go a long way toward
defining the emergent “digital culture.” For more information, consult Deuze’s
original article.

Digital Culture in Practice

Deuze makes one more observation not about what digital culture is but
rather how it works. Deuze argues that the production of digital culture will be
carried out through participation, remediation and bricolage.

Participation means that every individual will have the ability to contribute to
online media. Professionals and amateurs will work together much more often than
they did on “legacy media” products and projects.

Because people do not want to work for free, they will not flock to an online
platform simply because it has been opened up for contributions. If anyone could
build a Facebook, there would be hundreds or even thousands of competing
platforms. As it stands, there are perhaps ten major social media platforms
worldwide, if “major” means they are home to more than 200 million members.

It is also clear from social networking sites, Reddit, and similar social news
sharing sites that people will contribute to a platform even if it is not necessarily
well-policed or easy to use. In digital culture, it helps to be the first to be big.
Success breeds success in an economy based on attention, and what dominates
tends to be emotional issues, as satirized here.

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Consistency also seems to help, but what matters most is the ability to
consistently draw an audience. Think of a person trying to become a YouTube
influencer. They must publish interesting content regularly for months or even years
before they develop a following that they might be able to sell to advertisers. Once
the YouTube star does begin to peddle products, they run the risk of alienating a
portion of their audience.

Participation is an essential part of digital culture. It can be easy and fun to

do it for free. If you want to make a career out of it, it takes professional-level
commitment, and the resulting content often favors what is popular and emotionally
gripping rather than what is informative or socially beneficial.

Remediation means that old media are made new again in digital spaces.
Television becomes YouTube. Radio becomes podcasting, Spotify and Pandora.
Newspapers become … online newspapers! The new media take elements of the old
media and repurpose them, while “legacy” media firms copycat digital media trends,
buy out media startups, or try to forge new paths at significant expense.

In the practice of digital culture, media are remade in digital environments in

a process that combines the appealing parts of existing forms of media with
additional functionalities made possible by new ICTs and digital networking
capabilities. The author’s own research argues that attempts by legacy media
organizations to create new businesses online face many institutional hurdles.
Remediation is constantly happening, but that does not mean existing media
companies can determine how to monetize the practice in a sustainable way. We
should expect considerable remediation innovation to come from startup companies
and individual tech entrepreneurs with few ties to legacy media.

A good example of remediation is taking classic movies or video games and

showing them to young people to record their reactions for YouTube. Reaction
videos of all kinds take media products people are familiar with and show them to
the unfamiliar so that viewers can judge their reactions. This new media product

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repurposes old content with an added element designed to pique our interest;
however, remediation does not always add much value.

Bricolage is a French term not easy to translate literally to English. A

translation offering deep context might be: Do it yourself by combining elements
found elsewhere. Much of digital culture is an amalgamation of existing content and
new cultural work being done at home by people with amateur skills and affordable
but capable tools, such as smartphones and tablet computers. Even basic tools are
quite powerful. Smartphones come with front- and back-facing cameras as well as
HD-quality video. The computing power of a smartphone is more powerful than a
mainframe computer was 70 years ago. Independent producers have video and
audio editing software options and can create professional looking, popular media
products on their own with little formal training.

B. THE ROLE OF VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS IN TODAY’S DIGITAL AGE

The first cave paintings date back to prehistoric times, beginning roughly
40,000 years ago. The image that I am sharing here is from Lascaux, one of the
most famous cave paintings located in France. For me, this is one of the most
ancient and greatest example of visual communication. Humans by nature are very
visual animals and have been communicating this way since the beginning of time.
Visual communication is an instinctive way of communicating with one another.

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Images are powerful – our memory for pictures is remarkable and images
are remembered more clearly than words. Let’s look at the some examples.

This is possibly one of the most powerful photos ever taken. Who doesn’t
remember this? Or rather, who can ever forget it once seen?

Nick Ut’s Photography Vietnam War

Take this globally renowned image

Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl

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All these visual works contain enough information to convey many sentences. They
are memorable, make us think, feel and capture our gaze.

What about Visual Communication in Marketing?

Here are some great recent campaigns. Simple minimal text and and with
good craft in art direction.

The one at the left is for a Japanese knife brand and doesn’t need to say “my
knife is best” but shows you how the knife cuts with precision via an artfully carved
piece of salmon. It is very clean visually and eye catching too.

In Effective Advertising, words are not the only way we can communicate
ideas and feelings. A more important weapon is the visual. A picture in a print ad
captures more than twice as much information as a headline does. In fact, research
shows that 90% of the information that sticks in our brains is visual.
10% of people remember what they hear.
20% of people remember what they read.
But 70% of people remember what they see and do.
It’s more than just that. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text,
and it’s also true that 93% of our communication is non-verbal.

What about today?

In a world that has become totally digital, are we becoming more like
Neanderthals?

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During the last few years, humans have been changing. Interestingly, our
visual intelligence is actually increasing while verbal intelligence is on the decline.
According to UCL study, the way we communicate is becoming more caveman-like.
Modern man is moving more towards a “pictographic form of communication”.
Professor John Sutherland from University College London embellishes this when he
says:
“This harks back to a caveman form of communication where a single picture
can convey a full range of messages and emotions.”
On average, a person is distracted after just 8 seconds.

With all these new forms of media on digital platforms and social media, our
attention spans are changing too and we have so many distractions. Imagine looking
at Weibo, Facebook, WeChat and Instagram with many incoming messages all at the
same time. Our attention span is shortening and we are becoming less patient than
ever before.

As we can see, today’s fastest

growing social media platforms are visual-
based. This number is increasing and 84%
of communication is visual-based too.

Let’s look at some of the numbers

according to Instagram: users share an
average of 95 million photos and videos
per day. The most followed brand
(besides Instagram itself) is National
Geographic, with 87.5m followers and
counting.

Instagram clocks up 3.5 billion

likes every day and the usage has
doubled in the last two years. 48.8% of

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brands communicate on Instagram. By 2018, this is predicted to rise to 70.7%. If we

only look at the top 100 brands in the world, 95% have an Instagram and Twitter
account.

But is it enough to just do visual communication?

We are in a digital age where the need to deliver the right visual
communication is stronger than ever. This means we have to be consistent on all
platforms, while keeping the fundamental basics of branding.

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Visual storytelling has become the most meaningful form of marketing, but
many images on social media do not reflect brand image and positioning due to
various factors ( produced too quickly, lack of quality control, etc.)

The major problem we are facing now is not only how to be more visual
based in our marketing approaches but also how to do it right while building a
consistent brand image. The demand of speedy updates is creating a mess on social
media, and brands are suffering from inconsistent branding as well as incorrect ways
of building a brand image. That’s why the need to use the Right-Visual
communication approach is stronger than ever because it takes less than a few
seconds to form a first impression! So fast that it can either cause a disaster or
become an art piece for renewing brand perception / brand image/ brand
positioning.

As I mentioned above, we must have a caveman simplicity in communication

as we become more digital and must remember the basic fundamentals of branding,
applying them insistently. Basics have become more important than ever and
excellence in visual communication is now the most important factor in the digital
age.

In today’s digital age,

social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
YouTube, LinkedIn and Snapchat
have exploded in popularity and
are heavily ingrained in our day-
to-day lives. It has dramatically
changed the communications
landscape over the past decade. It
has not only altered the way we
communicate but also increased
interactivity and connectedness,

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with access to real-time news and information, and evolved the way we do business
today.

This boom in social media platforms has been further fueled by the increased
take-up of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as we stray away from
desktops. Businesses are increasingly recognizing social media as a valuable,
inexpensive communications tool to reach out to their key stakeholders and to
engage with them in today’s globalized world – thus diminishing the communications
gap that once existed.

However, with our social media feeds constantly clogged with updates and
news, it’s easy for information to get lost in the noise and reams of text. Words
alone will not arrest the attention of our social media audience. However, by
integrating compelling visual content, this can boost how your audience absorbs and
remembers your message.

Visual content can take the form of images, videos, charts, infographics,
animations, iconography, and gifs – providing companies with the opportunity to
present bite-size information in a compelling manner.

Now an inescapable part of our everyday lives, visual communication is a key

driver of engagement on social media. Notably, Facebook and Twitter have
redesigned their news feed to allow greater emphasis on visual content, resulting in
greater interaction. According to social media guru, Dan Zarella, tweets with images
are 94% more likely to be retweeted than tweets without. Similarly, Facebook posts
with accompanying images see 2.3 times more engagement than those without.

But why are visuals so powerful? It comes down to the way our brains
receive and transmit information. Numerous neurological studies have pointed out
that our brains are tuned to processing visuals at a vastly greater speed. In addition,
it allows us to retain and transmit much more information when it’s delivered
visually. Another fun fact – a group of MIT neuroscientists found that the brain can
identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds.

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Putting the psychology behind this aside, creating good and relevant visual
content requires a strategic approach. Simply posting visuals for the sake of posting
will not optimise engagement. It’s important for visuals to be compelling, engaging,
and relevant to our social media audiences. For the majority of us who are not
creative graphic designers, the general perception that we have is that we are not
well-equipped with the right skills and knowledge to create visual imagery. This has
changed. Thanks to the rise of numerous tools, applications and websites introduced
into the market, compelling visual content can be easily created in a cost-effective
manner and customized for various social media platforms.

Social media is here to stay and will continue to impact and influence our
day-to-day lives over the coming decade. It is vital for businesses to step up and
grab the endless opportunities that social media platforms can bring about with the
aid of visual communications.

DIGITAL WORLD

In the 21st Century, there was

an estimation of over 2.34 billion
users that used social media
platforms worldwide in 2016, with
the number rapidly growing. For most
of us, Internet is such an effortless
consuming in our everyday lives that we sometimes forget to eat or do something,
which can be very worrying. With having everything at our fingertips, use of Internet
it so easy to connect with others whenever we want and wherever we want. With
phones and Internet being at a hand reach, we no longer need newspapers to get
information from, as we rather read about them on our social media feeds or reading
the news from our devices. With this advanced technology, we can only be grateful,
but we need to understand that digital world and the digital devices have many
implications.

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Digital Dependence/Addiction
Did you ever think about how much time you spend checking and being up to
date with your social media platforms? Let me shock you. 72% of online adults use
social media and the average user spends 23 hours a week on social media — that’s
the equivalent of a part time job! Social media platforms are enormously addictive.
Throughout the day, most of us check and interact on the social media platforms,
spending far too much time on stuff that might not benefit us in any way, apart from
achieving a social status and being up to date with all the statues, tweets, pictures,
etc.

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Tweeting or checking emails may be harder to resist than cigarettes and

alcohol, which was concluded from an experiment done by researchers at Chicago
University, in USA. This shows how much impact social media platforms have on our
lives and daily decisions.
There is a huge problem in today’s world with people not having a normal
conversation or meeting to talk with others face-to-face. Yet, instead we choose to
chat online on different social media platforms where we can chat to multiple
individuals at one time and not just one. But are we missing something from this?
Yes, absolutely! By talking in person, we can see other person’s emotions,
expressions and reactions, whereas this cannot be seen or experienced when talking
over a social media platform such as Facebook or Snapchat. We are lacking such
basic communication skills, which are a necessity in our day-to-day lives. This can
prove many personal difficulties to individuals to open up to others when they will
meet in person, as they might not feel confident, whereas they would feel more
secure and self-assured when talking through internet.

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Social media is so powerful and successful in many ways, braking the barriers
of distance and time, barriers of physical presence and visibility, however, we as
humans, we need to know our limits to not become addictive. There is far too many
‘users’ that have a fear of missing out (FOMO) on particular stuff on social media
platforms, which account for 67%. In this situation, I can honestly admit that
sometimes I do feel that if I don’t scroll down my Instagram page I could be at a risk
of missing some exciting photographs, which shows the impacts and implications of
social media usage. But on the other hand, is scrolling down the same Instagram
page with different pictures beneficial to me? Is it worth the time? Or is it just an
addiction that I have introduced into my daily life? We all need to ask ourselves
those questions and honestly answer them.

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Another example of excessively using digital media is to do with our own

health and experiencing pressure and low self-esteem. Young women on Instagram
in particular feel the pressure over how many likes they get over a certain picture. If
the picture is not getting the right amount of likes that people expect, there is a
possibility of that person feeling that they don’t look good enough for their followers,
which can lead to deleting the picture because it is not as popular.
“Sometimes when I post a photo of myself, I end up taking 20 different
pictures and choosing the best one. It can get depressing at times, but I have to
remind myself that I put myself in that scenario.”
There will always be a feel of pressure that we will feel when using social
media platforms, especially Instagram. People at those stages can critically compare
their life with others, as they might want to measure their success and failures,

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comparing to someone like a celebrity. We might not think, but the impacts of this
could be disastrous, as people, especially young women can feel low-esteem,
creating a situation where they ask themselves questions and most of them time,
having negative answers which creates low-esteem.

TAKE A BREAK!
TASK NO. 1
Can you recall what you have read?
Let us test your recall. What for you now are the roles of visual communication in
today’s Digital World?

You may browse the previous pages if you cannot do it!

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C. CREATING EFFECTIVE VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Introduction to Visual Communication

The expression of ideas and information using visible forms or aids is referred
to as visual communication. In fact, it is a pictorial form of communication. Body
language including gestures is part of such communication in business. Presentations
may also include photographs, charts, graphs, and diagrams to enforce or
demonstrate ideas or data. Visual communication also includes traffic signals,
hoarding boards and paintings too.
Importance of Visual Communication in Business
 People remember what they see so much more than what they hear.
 Visual things have direct route to long-term memory of the audience.
 Research supports that visual communication can be more powerful than
verbal communication.
 The more visual content in a presentation, the more memorable will the
information be.
 People not only communicate visually more than ever, they also communicate
better when they ever, they also communicate better when they
communicate visually.
Let’s talk about a few examples to Illustrate
Brain is wired to make sense of an image in milliseconds, compare that with
the rate of the person talking or his or her reading speed.
Twitter accounts with profile photos have TEN TIMESTEN more followers on
average than profile accounts without them.
Research also has confirmed the retention of verbal presentation at around
10%. One can achieve almost 50% retention by his/her combining
presentation with visual messages.
Presenters who work with VISUAL aids are TWICE as likely to achieve the
audience objectives as those who do not.
Visual content accounts for almost 55% of what people from world-class
conferences, with audio accounting for only about 38%.about 38%.

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Selecting the Right Type of Visuals

 Visuals should, clarify, and amplify, not repeat what is said.
 In order to make sure that the intent of the visual aid is clear, we should try
to use only important or memorable words or phrases.
 It is important to consider if the visual can be seen and understood by all the
members of the audience who are farthest from the screen when choosing to
use it.
 In order to do this, we must test out the visual aids in different environments.
 Visual communication relies on vision, and is primarily presented or expressed
with different primarily presented or expressed with different images.
 A visual message accompanying text has a power to inform, educate, or
persuade a p person or audience.

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Producing and Integrating Visuals for Effective Communication

Know the subject matter: The ability to present a: The ability to present a subject
with confidence directly affects the audience impression and will help keep their
attention.
Know the audience: A: A small amount of research into the makeup of audience
will reap large benefits on the presentation day.
Know yourself: We all must push our limits and: We all must push our limits and
willingly bite off more than we may be comfortable swallowing on occasion -- this is
how we learn grow.
Develop a theme: All presentations, regardless of their complexity, are designed
with a single purpose -- whether it is to sell, educate, or for pure entertainment –
and the theme must be built around the purpose of communication.
Prepare a script: The script does not necessarily have to be a work of literary
excellence, presentation scripts shares four basic parts: opening, body , summary
and closing.
Select the proper visual ads: Good presentation visuals, regardless of the display
medium, do not have to be expensive. When properly planned and produced, simple,
well designed graphics add.

CONCLUSION
 The evaluation of a good visual communication design is mainly based on
measuring comprehension by the audience, ,not on personal aesthetic and/or
artistic preference as there are no universally agreed-upon principles of
beauty and ugliness.
 Excluding two dimensional images, there are other ways to express
information visually - gestures and body language, animation (digital or
analogue), and film.
 Visual communication by e-mail, a textual medium, is commonly expressed
with emoticons, and embedded digital images.

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DESIGNING DIGITAL SIGNS FOR EFFECTIVE VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Digital signage could prove to be a highly efficient medium for some

organizations. Digital signage refers not just to posters and billboards. It is extremely
versatile and combines content from practically any source and then connects to a
wide assortment of displays to achieve a hugely impressive interactive
communications experience.
Digital signage is extremely dynamic and is used for informing and
influencing target audiences for promoting products, explaining corporate benefits,
providing directions, managing key performance indicators, reinforcing branding and
a lot more.
In today’s dynamic and fast-paced consumer scenario, firms dealing with
brand promotion are increasingly opting for Digital Signage. Digital signage has been
proven beyond doubt, to be an effective platform for passing on the message to the
target group. It is important for you to keep in mind that when your design
comprises the right elements it is sure to grab consumer attention and more and
more potential customers would not only be noticing the message, but would be
considering it with seriousness. Designing digital signage could be pretty challenging
task, but would be fun no doubt. You get the opportunity to experiment with basic
design elements namely text, color, contrast and arrangement.
You should always remember that the purpose of digital signs is imparting
information. While designing digital signs you must at first, clarify the precise
purpose they are going to serve. Find out whether the purpose is company branding,
entertainment, employee messaging, advertising or any other.

Tools for Creating Effective Digital Signs

Advertising experts believe that content is king and you must focus on
creating content that is said to be engaging, relevant and appealing. The high-tech
era has made it easy to access effective content-creation tools that allow greater
flexibility and independence, while creating or changing content. This leads to lower

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costs and greater degree of efficiency. Content-creation tools are known for allowing
filters, movement and effects that need to be infused into the content to make sure
that post production studios are not needed.

Template Editor
It is effective in publishing
information speedily and
without any third party
software. You could
develop new content in a
few seconds right from
your web browser by using
Template Editor and a host
of other complimentary templates. Template Editor comes with an impressive
complimentary template database which is growing consistently, without you having
to pay any cost. Custom templates could be generated to complement a corporate
design or unique specifications.

Picture Fine-Tuning
This is a very easy tool for cropping and
rotating any uploaded picture. No image
editing software is needed. Adjust pictures in
such a way that it rightly fits a 16:9 or 4:3
screen, or some other format, as per your
choice. All you need to do is upload a raw
photo directly from the camera on to the
Digital Signage screens in just a few
minutes. You do not even need to use
Photoshop or any such software.

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Google Web Designer

This is the latest Google tool
that has left a profound
impact on digital signs. This
tool is meant for authoring
online advertisements in
HTML5. This is offered free
of charge by Google. In very
little time you can come up
with brilliant graphics enhanced by 3D animation. This tool is definitely one of the
simplest HTML5 tools suitable for effective content creation. The tool has a great
playback performance.
Google Web Designer makes easy layout of photos, vector graphics or text possible.
3D and 2D animation is possible with this tool. It has built-in controls that assist in
video, interactive picture gallery, and maps manipulation. It supports advanced
customization thanks to complete CSS tags and also, event-based JavaScript
programming.

Some Do’s while designing Digital Signs

You are required to do certain

things and follow certain
dictates for marketing your
company, or products or
services with success to your
potential as well as existing
target audience.
 You must clearly
define the message to be
promoted. It is best to focus on that message and include it positively in all
content you develop.
 Make the message concise, clear and to the point as possible so that it is
easy to retain. If your intended message is concealed behind weather

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updates, scrolling news feeds, and poor design, the audience would be
confused and would take time to receive the message and definitely would
not retain your message.
 You must concentrate on making your display areas and screens more
visible. Make sure your target audience can easily access your message.
 Provide relevant content. Link your digital signage to certain systems namely
Appointment Booking or Queue Management. This makes live interaction
between two systems possible and provides specific content that has
relevance to your client.
 Provide fresh content. Keep changing your content regularly. Even if you
have a mind-blowing presentation, nobody cares much for the same content
and customers do not respond to stale content. You could even alter the
playlist, so content may be played at different times each day.

Some Don’ts While Designing Digital Signs

 It is best not to unnecessarily

complicate your message. You must realize
that cramming too much content would
confuse your target audience as they
generally have a pretty short retention
span. Your message would be lost if you
do not keep it simple. It is best to limit
your campaigns to only one idea and just
use two sentences to keep your text
compact. It is a good idea to keep your posts less than 250 characters. This
can definitely result in 60% more engagement. It is best to opt for multiple
slides for communication instead of cramming everything into just one.
 Don’t just do digital signs just because others are doing it. You must come up
with a clear strategy. Your team should know the precise reason why you are
doing it and they should be aware of your ultimate goal.
 Don’t overdo on the first day. True, you are excited about your new digital
signs solution, but try to keep the implementation basic and simple. You

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must allow your designers and marketers to completely appreciate and

understand your product, before you go on to any detailed presentations.
 Don’t simply broadcast. You must identify your target audience, come up
with messages and presentations that match your target audience and then
choose the branch, or store or office where you would like to broadcast the
information. There is no point in simply pushing content without any clear-
cut strategies. It would only create tremendous workload for the designers
and marketers. You would not get the desired results.

Latest Designing Trends in Digital Signs

Cost-effective Solutions
Digital solutions companies are trying out more cost-effective strategies to
operate. Developers are looking for more economical and simpler ways for
developing digital signage technology. This implies that cheaper software and
hardware options such as small media players and USB sticks are gradually replacing
the more expensive hardware options.

Ultra HD Displays
1080p HD has made way for
ultra HD as the latest standard. This
technology has generated a lot of
hype and everyone is talking about
it. The digital designers are naturally
interested in adopting it. However,
the cost as well as, the rate of
adoption would play a vital role in
determining how soon it is accepted
as the standard for digital signs.

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Intimate and Smaller Signage

There is growing tendency toward
more intimate and smaller displays for
engaging users. There has been a constant
rise in the number of individuals using touch
screen technology and tablets. This has
prompted businesses to take advantage by
offering smaller touch screen signs in strategic places in the stores. This results in a
truly intimate experience. There are greater chances of customers interacting and
engaging with the signs. These smaller units are important for capturing emails,
encouraging couponing, entering contests, gaining access to select and exclusive
promotions and gathering feedback regarding customer experience.

Mobile Integration
Mobile technology is very
much in focus today and
businesses are trying to bring in
mobile integration right into their
strategy for digital signage use.
Smartphones and other mobile
devices would be treated as an
extension of mobile signs.
Allowing users to enter contests, complete transactions and do a host of other things
by interacting with digital signs via their mobile devices.

Simpler Interfaces
While designing digital signage
emphasis should be on simplicity of use. It is
necessary to create interfaces that are simple
to use apart from being interactive. If the
interface is not simple and easy the customer
would not really understand what he is
required to do or how he should interact with the given technology. This poses

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immense risk as the customer will disengage and you would lose him.

Cloud-based Solutions
There is a gradual inclination toward
cloud-based solutions for supporting digital
signage. This relatively new technology is
effective for creating appealing digital
signage experiences and novel ways for
interacting or engaging with customers.

Creative Aspects of Designing Digital Signs

Digital signs should actually be an extension of your environment, culture and

most importantly, your brand. The creative team should infuse and integrate
graphics, fonts and colors into a design ensuring that each and every component is
customized as per your unique project specifications. Emphasis should be on creating
dynamic and attractive layout elements, tailor-made for your brand. You could think
of incorporating photos, games, video and more.
For keeping continuity of message you could opt for designing quick-fill Axis
TV templates. It is worth customizing PowerPoint templates for creating designs
easily outside the system. Setting up pre-configured department notices and alert
templates is a good idea. While designing digital signage, consider animating static
logos, graphics and text for greater impact. Creating real-time shuttle mapping and
energy usage dashboards proves to be more fruitful. It is always a good idea to keep
your target audience engaged by encouraging audience participation with SMS Polls,
QR Tags and more. You may customize directories and maps for giving precise
directions to your visitors.

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Design Tips in a Nutshell

Always keep in mind that aesthetics are essential for boosting audience
engagement. Clear and concise communication always triumphs. You could consider
adding motion for grabbing and prolonging audience attention. Relevant content is
always necessary. You could keep digital signage entertaining by providing fresh
content. Keep updating your content on a regular basis.
Do not forget to incorporate pictures as they convey a lot more than just text.
Clever use of photographs can clearly help in enhancing audience engagement.
Remember that including a call to action along with your message really helps. It
definitely boosts audience engagement.
If you keep these basic guidelines in mind, while creating digital signs, your
campaign is sure to be a success. Your digital signage would attract more viewers
and engage more target audience. This would definitely enhance your organization’s
communications.

TASK NO. 2 Apply your Knowledge

ADVERTISING PROJECT

Think of a food product you can make and capture a photo of it for an advertising
digital poster. See photos below for samples.

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TASK NO. 3 Assess your Knowledge

WOW your Guests with Visual Communication!

Hotels and resorts around the world use visual communications to help guests and
employees. Create an advertising poster to give your guests and visitors information
they need and want in an engaging format that uses your data and content to
effectively reach your audience. See photos below for sample.

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Rubric for the ADVERTISING PROJECTS

5 3 1

References:

https://press.rebus.community/mscy/chapter/chapter-2-digital-culture/
https://www.blue-comms.com/the-role-of-visual-communications-in-todays-digital-
age/
https://www.thebrandberries.com/2018/07/25/power-of-visual-communication-in-
the-digital-age/
https://medium.com/digital-society/digital-world-b44aae2def5f
http://www.instantshift.com/2015/04/14/effective-visual-communication/
https://www.slideshare.net/S-suman/designing-visual-communication-70339516
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/beginning-graphic-design/typography/1/
https://smedio.com/effective-visual-communications/
https://www.columnfivemedia.com/infographic-10-tips-for-designing-effective-visual-
communication

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