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The purpose of this paper is to explore a semantics representation framework for narrative images, conforming to the image-interpretation process.

This paper explores the essential features of semantics evolution in the process of narrative images interpretation. It proposes a novel semantics representation framework, ESImage (evolution semantics of image) for narrative images. ESImage adopts a hierarchical architecture to progressively organize the semantic information in images, enabling the evolutionary interpretation under the support of a graph-based semantics data model. Also, the study shows the feasibility of this framework by addressing the issues of typical semantics representation with the scenario of the Dunhuang fresco.

The process of image interpretation mainly concerns three issues: bottom-up description, the multi-faceted semantics representation and the top-down semantics complementation. ESImage can provide a comprehensive solution for narrative image semantics representation by addressing the major issues based on the semantics evolution mechanisms of the graph-based semantics data model.

ESImage needs to be combined with machine learning to meet the requirements of automatic annotation and semantics interpretation of large-scale image resources.

This paper sorts out the characteristics of the gradual interpretation of narrative images and has discussed the major issues in its semantics representation. Also, it proposes the semantic framework ESImage which deploys a flexible and sound mechanism to represent the semantic information of narrative images.

Our aim is to highlight the value in using photographs and visuals for narrative criminology. We do this by showing how people draw from and create visual symbols to communicate personal narratives and by showing how we as researchers can use these images in interviews to elicit richer responses. Specifically, we illustrate the value of images for narrative criminology by telling the story of Chico, a 50-year-old, Hispanic man who has used meth for nearly three decades. In response to his marginalisation, Chico presents himself in two primary ways: as a rebellious, antiauthority menace to outsiders and as a caring, generous friend to insiders. He displays these identities through visual symbols (on his home, property and body) and through his stories and actions. Additionally, we use photographs taken of him and his home during interviews to elicit his personal narratives (i.e. photo-elicitation interviews). We argue that scholars have much to gain by examining the use of images to stimulate interviews and open necessary interdiscursivity of qualitative criminology.

Stories of employability are told in employment and educational settings, notably the selection interviews. A popular training approach guiding higher education students to construct employability stories has been the past-behaviour storytelling method. However, insufficient research exists regarding the method's effectiveness and optimisation. This study examines whether the method (1) increases the quantity and quality of interview narratives in story forms and (2) can be enhanced by image stimuli.

In a double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures, participants submitted four weekly interview narratives. After receiving past-behaviour serious storytelling training in Week 3, they were randomly allocated to an exposure group using images and a control group using keywords as a placebo to continue producing interview narratives. The interview narratives were assessed based on the number of stories and quality ratings of narrative conformity, relevance and conciseness. Results before and after the training, and with and without the image stimuli, were analysed.

Training increased the number of stories. Training and repeated practice also increased narrative quality ratings. However, the image-based intervention was the strongest predictor of improved quality ratings (effect size 2.47 points on the observed scale of 0–10, p < 0.01, 95% CI [1.46, 3.47]).

A pre-existing ability to tell employability stories cannot be assumed. Training is necessary, and intervention is required for enhancement. Multi-sensory narrative interventions may be considered.

This study is the first known double-blind randomised control trial with repeated measures evaluating if storytelling training and image stimuli improve interview narratives.

This study aims to examine how veganism is “seen” by young adult non-vegan consumers and how prevailing attitudes reinforce or challenge stigmas around veganism.

Photovoice methodology was used to explore young non-vegan consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards veganism. Data was collected from students studying advertising at a major university in Australia, who produced images and narratives reflective of their own attitudes towards veganism. Polytextual thematic analysis of the resulting visual data was then undertaken to reveal the dominant themes underpinning participants’ attitudes. Participant narratives were then reviewed to confirm whether the ascribed meaning aligned with participants’ intended meaning.

Participant images were reflective of first, how they saw their world and their place within it, which showed the interplay and interconnectedness between humans, animals and nature, and second, how they saw vegans within this world, with both positive and negative attitudes expressed. Interestingly, vegans were simultaneously admired and condemned. By situating these attitudes along a spectrum of moral evaluation, bounded by stigmatisation and moral legitimacy, participants saw vegans as being either Radicals, Pretenders, Virtuous or Pragmatists. For veganism to become more widely accepted by non-vegans, there is an important role to be played by each vegan type.

This study offers a more nuanced understanding of how and why dissociative groups, such as vegans, become stigmatised, which has implications for messaging and marketing practices around veganism and associated products/services. Future research could use a similar methodology to understand why other minority groups in society are stereotyped and stigmatised, which has broader social implications.

This paper explores the purposive use of the selfie in the construction of personal narratives that develop and support an individual’s human brand. Selfies were divided into archetypical clusters of “genres” that reflected the combined story told through Instagram image and accompanying text captions.

The analysis drew a randomized sample of 1,000 images with accompanying text from a large capture of 3,300 English language captioned selfies. Coding for semantic and semiotic data used a three-wave technique to overcome interpretive limitations.

Based on their structural characteristics, seven genre types emerged from the coded sample set. These primary genres of selfie meta-narratives are autobiography, parody, propaganda, romance, self-help, travel diary and coffee-table book.

The research is limited in generalization to the Instagram photo-sharing app platform by design. Samples were taken from the app due both to its popularity and its capacity to annotate images. Selfies conducted in non-public, non-annotation-based apps may produce alternative genres and classifications.

The paper presents a genre classification to examine how selfies are used to “show, not tell” a portion of the consumer’s life story. Brands, firms and marketers can apply genres to examine the selfie types that best connect with the identity of their brands and consumers, based on how their consumers communicate within the Instagram network.

Selfies are an oft pathologized and moralized aspect of consumer conduct. We present a view of the selfie as a deliberate, consciously considered communication approach to maintaining social bonds between friends, family and wider audience. Selfies are presented as a combined effect of consumption of a social media service (Instagram) and the co-production of valued content (the selfie) that recognizes the individual as an active constructor of their digital self.

The paper outlines a novel framework of selfie genres to classify the deliberate human-brand narratives expressed in selfies. By taking a narrative perspective to the Instagram selfie practice, the genre type captures the combined effect of the mimesis and diegesis, where the mimesis showing of self is contextualized with the diegesis of the provided captions to capture an intentional storytelling act of image and text.

To meet the emerging demand for fine-grained annotation and semantic enrichment of cultural heritage images, this paper proposes a new approach that can transcend the boundary of information organization theory and Panofsky's iconography theory.

After a systematic review of semantic data models for organizing cultural heritage images and a comparative analysis of the concept and characteristics of deep semantic annotation (DSA) and indexing, an integrated DSA framework for cultural heritage images as well as its principles and process was designed. Two experiments were conducted on two mural images from the Mogao Caves to evaluate the DSA framework's validity based on four criteria: depth, breadth, granularity and relation.

Results showed the proposed DSA framework included not only image metadata but also represented the storyline contained in the images by integrating domain terminology, ontology, thesaurus, taxonomy and natural language description into a multilevel structure.

DSA can reveal the aboutness, ofness and isness information contained within images, which can thus meet the demand for semantic enrichment and retrieval of cultural heritage images at a fine-grained level. This method can also help contribute to building a novel infrastructure for the increasing scholarship of digital humanities.

Teachers develop and use a special kind of knowledge. This knowledge is neither theoretical, in the sense of theories of learning, teaching, and curriculum, nor merely practical, in the sense of knowing children. If either of these were the essential ingredient of what teachers know, then it would be easy to see that others have a better knowledge of both; academics with better knowledge of the theoretical and parents and others with better knowledge of the practical. A teacher’s special knowledge is composed of both kinds of knowledge, blended by the personal background and characteristics of the teacher, and expressed by her in particular situations. The idea of “image” is one form of personal practical knowledge, the name given to this special practical knowledge of teachers (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Dienes, 1982). In this chapter I show how one teacher’s image of the “classroom as home” embodies her personal and professional experience and how, in turn, the image is expressed in her classroom practices and in her practices in her personal life. Using a variety of classroom episodes gathered over two years with two teachers, I offer a theoretical outline of the experiential dimensions of an image and, in so doing, present image as a knowledge term which resides at the nexus of the theoretical, the practical, the objective, and the subjective.

The purpose of this paper is to semantically annotate the content of digital images with the use of Semantic Web technologies and thus facilitate retrieval, integration and knowledge discovery.

After a review and comparison of the existing semantic annotation models for images and a deep analysis of the characteristics of the content of images, a multi-dimensional and hierarchical general semantic annotation framework for digital images was proposed. On this basis, taking histories images, advertising images and biomedical images as examples, by integrating the characteristics of images in these specific domains with related domain knowledge, the general semantic annotation framework for digital images was customized to form a domain annotation ontology for the images in a specific domain. The application of semantic annotation of digital images, such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis and semantic reuse, were also explored.

The results showed that the semantic annotation framework for digital images constructed in this paper provided a solution for the semantic organization of the content of images. On this basis, deep knowledge services such as semantic retrieval, visual analysis can be provided.

The semantic annotation framework for digital images can reveal the fine-grained semantics in a multi-dimensional and hierarchical way, which can thus meet the demand for enrichment and retrieval of digital images.

The purpose of this paper is to further understanding of the roles that time and context play in consumers’ evolving brand image construction processes over time.

This exploratory, qualitative research is based on the analysis and interpretation of 164 online consumer narratives pertaining to the consumers’ most memorable coffee moments.

Consumers build images of a brand through both fleeting moments over time linked to special occasions and everyday moments in their lives over time. Understanding image construction processes thus must go beyond just physical (location) and psychological (social) circumstances. Activity processes (“When I am doing […]”) also are central to this understanding.

Time and context emerge as key determinants of consumers’ brand image processes and should hence be explicitly recognised in branding research. This study focuses only on brand admirers; because the study context refers to a business-to-consumer product, the focus is the product brand.

Considering the key role of memorable past moments (time and context) in consumers’ brand image construction processes, branding strategies should reflect systematic efforts to identify these moments. Such an approach can provide opportunities for companies to deepen their consumer understanding and achieve a favourable presence in consumer contexts during which brand images get constructed.

This study identifies key dimensions of time and context and thus furthers understanding of these dimensions in relation to brand images.

The question of crisis resistance and resilience of long-lived family businesses became particularly volatile with the beginning of the Corona crisis. In this context the project “Narratives of Survival” was launched focusing on the prevailing narratives to find out how crisis situations have been dealt with and narrated by long-lived German family firms.

Based on narrative interviews, the empirical study of transgenerational entrepreneurship was first approached in an open-ended manner. The interview guideline addresses different types of crises and asks about resources, insights, regulations and explanations for the longevity of the family businesses.

In the qualitative content analysis, 12 guiding narratives were pointed out, providing information about the self-narratives of these entrepreneurial families which revolve around the three themes of self-image, familiarity and strategy.

This study provides information about the secrets of longevity of four very old family firms. The narratives revealed that strengthening the identity of the entrepreneurial family and employees of the family business as well as generating a shared reality, supports constructive handling of challenges and crises. This study contributes to theory by answering calls for narrative analysis in family firms and to practice by showing what younger companies can learn from long-lived family businesses.