The Media’s Trump-Russia Graphics: We Need To Talk Quantity and Standards
Throughout 2017 there were countless Trump-Russia pieces that came out of dozens of newspapers, online news sites, cable news, and blogs. Many of those pieces presented fresh in-house visual images to pair with the headline. But are those images serving a productive service or misdirecting our perceptions?
We live in the midst of the journalism of interruption, and the role of graphic design has never been more essential.
More than ever people are consuming their news online, which does not offer the loyalty of subscriptions that traditional news organizations were built upon. Online media is about clicks; social media shares are the new subscriptions meaning traditional news had to become a more visual experience.
Outlets don’t want to spend all that time and money to produce an article just for it to get overlooked in a flooded social media feed. So outlets can draw in readers with pure aesthetics, it’s a social media fishing lure.
Much like a magazine cover, news artwork is a form of advertising and rarely adds context to articles.
Its marketing, like a Pepsi commercial, these images contain all sorts of hyperbole.
Some of the more popular images are hyperbolic images depicting Trump and Putin’s relationship. Though no one believes the two men are actually dating seeing images like this has some affect on our perception.
First impressions really do matter — what we see, hear, or feel in our initial encounter with something shapes how we process it. But also the number of impressions can shape our perception.
It doesn’t take very long for our brain to understand a visual image — studies show it is less than 1/10 of a second. That means that even though you scroll by acknowledging a certain image is old news, it still registers in your head.
If we are going to cut through fake news, one thing we have to do is identify when marketing is manipulating our emotions. Visual content invokes our emotions quicker and with greater intensity, so as media becomes more visual our emotions become more malleable to the content.
Recent studies show that as many as 6 in 10 people will share articles online without reading them. So if consumers are not consuming the text and are sharing based almost entirely on the headline or image, then all we are left with is the sharing of political memes.
The art created to garner attention doesn’t get put through the same public microscope as the actual text of an article or a salacious headlines does.
However, now that news is more visual our level of scrutiny must change.
Standards
Upon reviewing the Trump/Russia images, you’ll notice that outlets don’t really mock Putin. He is typically seen as alpha, while Trump or Russian culture is the punchline.
From associating Russia with the “Hammer and Sickle” of the dissolved Soviet Union to degrading the Russian Orthodox St. Basil’s Cathedral, these popular images reveal America’s ignorance towards Russia.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the improper use of the Cyrillic alphabet or the images that invoke fear towards the people of Russia. The majority of the imagery associated with Trump/Russia is questionable at best and threatening at worst.
Outlets are consistently using old Cold War imagery to grab attention.
If The Daily Beast wrote a headline misidentifying Russia as the USSR, the demand to change the headline would be tremendous. The Hammer and Sickle symbolism died in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved; most know that as the end of the Cold War.
Seriously, how is this a thing?
The Daily Beast has some very talented writers but their graphics department has some questionable taste. Like this image from January 2018 with Trump’s hand giving Putin the White House.
If you read the article you will learn that Kevin Harrington, a NSC’s official for strategic planning, in February 2017 pitched an idea to withdraw U.S. forces from the Baltic’s. The pitch was set in the context of a Russia reset with the new administration; ultimately it was a moot point since they passed on Harrington’s idea.
I am summarizing so I recommend you read the whole article, but at no point during my read of the article did I envision Trump handing over the White House.
The Daily Beast broke a majority of the stories identifying Russian accounts on social media; like the Facebook accounts shown to have reached as many as 70 million eyes.
But how many eyes have seen the hyperbole of The Daily Beast’s images?
There are roughly 22 million monthly visitors to The Daily Beast website, plus 1.14 million followers on Twitter and 2.1 million followers on Facebook. This doesn’t even take into account when anyone shares the article on their own.
The Daily Beast is not Russian Propaganda, but my point here is to highlight that they know how many eyes can see an image on social media platforms.
The images presented by the Daily Beast are harmful to peoples perception, not of the Trump/Russia scandal, but of the perception of the Russian people in general. Never do these images add context to the underlying articles.
Images Matter
Speaking of harmful; The Daily Beast isn’t the only one to use the “scary Soviets” image.
Now we have a congressional candidate who has gone full blown Rocky 4 on us. Andrew Janz made an ad announcing he is running against Devin Nunes. Nunes is politician who has done some really stupid stuff recently, but Lenin?
The Only Standing Structure in Russia and Transformer’s Character: The Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin by the Moat
Although it’s known to most as St. Basil’s, this legendary building is officially called “The Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin by the Moat.”
Built in the 16th century it is made up of nine cathedrals in Red Square. Just to the west of St. Basil’s lies the historic fortress and government building known as the Kremlin. Though St. Basil’s has been the symbol of Russia for centuries, it is not the Kremlin.
Saint Basil’s is primarily a museum now and it is evident in conversations with my friends and colleagues that sometimes we forget it’s a religious icon too.
I am not arguing we should drop St. Basil’s and hundreds of years of symbolism, it won’t happen, but there needs to be a better understanding.
Tops? Really?
A good representation of America’s confusion with Russia is contained within our misunderstanding of St. Basil’s, the universal symbol to represent Russia.
On the day the Time Cover came out both Business Insider and The Independent had difficulties identifying the building. CNN’s writer went with minarets, which are on mosque.
We’ve Become Numb To What We Are Saying.
Did you know that the Russian letter “Я” is actually NOT the letter “R” written backwards, but is in fact a vowel pronounced “ya.”
Typographic manipulation is not new, nor is it Cyrillic specific. Language is a center piece to culture. But the recent manipulation of the Cyrillic alphabet feels like mocking a culture.
Cyrillic is the name of an alphabet that is shared by numerous countries. Not just Russia. Trust me, you don’t want a part in the geopolitical fight happening between those countries over the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s understandably a sensitive matter.
To be clear, the popular “Russian” font with its sharp angles and edges like Cyrillic is not the issue, it’s changing the Cyrillic alphabet to fit our language that feels inappropriate.
That said, I don’t know how to take the Washington, DC, bar that picked Russian kleptocracy as it’s Trump’s inauguration theme.
Something Is Wrong
The Kremlin meddled in the U.S. election, not the Russian people. If the Kremlin literally hacked every vote to install Trump, that is not a reason to show such grievous disrespect to their culture.
If we continue obscuring the realities of Putin’s regime by wrapping them in a fog of all-pervasive Russian evil, this will only get worse…
