The Picture Of The War In News Photos

In this article I make a visual content analysis on 1306 news photos from the New York Times and the Washington Post during the Iraqi war, and then make a further analysis on a set of photos by semiotic approach. The goal of the study is to find out what a picture these news photos depicted about the war and how?By content analysis, I get several findings as follows: 1, both the New York Times and the Washington Post had the tendency to avoid presenting casualties. 2, they both presented weapons fantastically. 3, they both had a sex narrative frame mostly focus on man. 4, the New York Times presented more military woman than the Washington Post. 5, they both ignored the old people and the children in the war. 6, the New York Times presented more 'evidence' than the Washington Post to legitimize the war. 7, the New York Times had more media patriotism than the Washington Post. 8, they both had the tendency to herorize the US Military. 9, they have the same shoot angles: to US army high angles were more than low angles; to Iraqi army low angles were more than high angles.By the semiotic analysis of a set of news photos, we can find that these photos construct pure and perfect myths about help and victory. These myths are constructed by tactics as follows: 1, visual rhetoric include symbol, metaphor and metonymy etc.2,the ablution archetype and the hero archetype. 3,the narrative strategy of binary opposition. Go further, we can find the media , the government and the audience have complicated relations which revealed by the news photos...