Photo Manipulation in Media

Greg Schultz 

gregschultzbasketball@gmail.com

Photo Manipulation

Photo manipulation can be a very dangerous thing especially in the media. Now, photo manipulation in general is not a bad thing and it can be used for different creative things and it can also be used for helping the flaws in pictures or really just doing it as a hobby. The problem is when people manipulate photos to show the world as if it was meant for reality and they try to play it off as the manipulated photo is genuine. 

 

According to GCF Global, social media users can use this technique for simple things like helping fix imperfections in photos for Instagram or Facebook, just a few examples. But when fast food places post about a new burger or something on their menu, they manipulate the photo where the food looks almost perfect but in reality when you go and buy the food it is nothing like the ad. This can be seen as a form of false advertising. It can also have a negative impact on peoples self esteem because if they see all these perfect photos of people not knowing that they are manipulated, it can make them start to feel down on the way they look at themselves. 

 

The same way in media if a news article posts a picture that is manipulated and it significantly changes the photo, it can send a false sense of news or fake news to the public. Some news websites or pages do this on purpose and manipulate the photo to try and get people to click on the article. This is fake news in general  because the content that they are trying to get away with is based off of fake content with the manipulated photo. 

Like seen in the photo above, someone manipulated the photo and put "Trump" on the hat of Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's hat. But in reality it was a New York Yankees hat. This is actually way more important than the average person thinks. Because this was photoshopped, with platforms like Twitter, media can be shared and sent out to thousands of people within minutes and if someone with the intent to show that 50 Cent was supporting Trump when in fact he wasn't, this could outrage certain people and start taking in out of him when in fact none of it was actually true. 

 

With photo manipulation, the spread of fake content and news can be was more impactful that the average person thinks because there can be big consequences. Especially with the statistic the the average person gets their news from social media.