Photo Manipulation
Oftentimes it is easy to see a photo and compare ourselves to what we are seeing, but the truth is that these images and videos on social media are not reality. Photo and video manipulation can challenge what we see as the truth, making us doubt what is right before our eyes.
Sometimes, even media outlets that we trust to report truth in the most unbiased way possible use photo manipulation. In the reading, we saw an example of Reuters, a reliable news agency, using photo manipulation. In the example, the body of a dead person had been moved, but for seemingly no reason. Moving the body didn’t help to cover the person out of respect or change the meaning of the photo. Photo manipulation isn’t always done as a way to bamboozle the viewer, but sometimes it goes too far.
Social Media and Photoshop
In a thesis paper written by University of South Florida student Roxanne N. Felig, she discusses the harmfulness that photoshop usage in social media can have on mental health. She found that a rise in usage of photo based platforms like Snapchat has contributed to an increase in popularity of photo manipulation. People are able to smooth blemishes, narrow their waist, and change countless other things about their physical appearance in photos to make it seem like reality. This results in extremely low self esteem in young people when they are comparing themselves to what they see online.
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| Source: boredpanda |
In the photo above, you can see how even the tiniest bit of photoshop and editing can completely change the way an image is viewed. The person looks slimmer and appears to have a different nose, eyes, and lips. The photo doesn’t look extremely altered, which is what leads so many young people to interpret it as true.
What Can Be Done?
There are ways now that when we see a picture or video that we can tell is manipulated on social media, we can report it. Journalists specifically hold a responsibility to do this as they are ethically obligated to report the truth. While it may be controversial to report manipulated content and you may think that everyone will be able to tell that it is edited, it is important that we hold ourselves to a standard of reporting on what is untrue. It can make a difference when we think in terms of mental health and overall awareness of the effects of retouched images on viewers. The more we fight for the visuals we see in the media to be unedited and raw, the more willing people will be to post unedited images without fear of judgement.
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