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When a new logo is released, it does not have an established meaning in the mind of the viewer. As logos have become more highly scrutinized by consumers and critics, it has become more important to understand viewers’ initial responses to logos. While other studies have researched the impact of aesthetic choices on viewer reaction to logos, this study aims to understand the effect of the surrounding visual identity system when a new logo is introduced.

This study combines a content analysis of 335 posts on the logo review website Brand New with the voting data from their polls to understand how visual context correlates with a viewer’s initial response.

Increased amounts of visual context correlate to an improved response from viewers. Different types of context that can be presented – from logo variations and environmental examples to videos and animation – have varied effects.

When releasing a new logo, companies and organizations may receive a better response from viewers if they provide more visual context. Animations may also provide an improved response.

This study takes a novel approach to exploring viewer responses to logos by combining content analysis with voting data. While most studies use fictitious or abstract logo designs, this study uses actual logos and context to better understand viewer responses.

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the visual coverage of amok school shootings with the aim of tracing particular patterns of visualization relating to the representation of victimizers and victims.

Methodology – Based on a qualitative mixed-method design combining visual content with visual context analysis of print and online coverage of the incidents, a tentative typology is developed to be tested in future empirical studies. The exploratory study builds on empirical data derived both from print and online coverage of two amok rampage incidents in Germany (Winnenden/Wendlingen, March 2009; Ansbach, September 2009). For comparative reasons the online visual coverage of three amok school shootings in the United States (Littleton, 1999; Red Lake, 2005; Blacksburg, 2007), two in Finland (Tuusula, 2007; Kauhajoki, 2008), as well as two additional cases in Germany (Erfurt, 2002; Emsdetten, 2006) were included in the sample.

Findings – A typology of mainly press photographs about amok school shootings with three main categories – visuals portraying the perpetrator(s), visuals portraying the victims, and visuals about the context. For each of the three main categories there are several subcategories. However, quality media focus on context visuals while tabloid media focus on the perpetrator, and sometimes on the victims. Additionally, a clear distinction between print and online media emerged, with quality print media adhering more strictly to privacy laws than both tabloid and quality online sites.

Research limitations – Different samples of amok events; only one with a full sampling of both print and online newspapers and magazines; TV coverage not taken into account.

Practical implications – Heightened media attention and the pervasive need of media to visualize violent events underscore the relevance of empirically based guidelines for photojournalists and editors alike. The results of this study are a first step in this direction.

Originality – The chapter contributes to visual communication research insofar as it presents a first theoretical and methodological approach to operationalize visuals in the context of reporting about a particular type of violent event.

The chapter introduces a methodological approach to analyzing visual material based on Erving Goffman's frame analysis. Building on the definition of dominant frames in a set of visual material, and the analysis of keying within these frames, the approach provides a tangible tool to analyze contextualized visual material sociologically. To illustrate the approach, the chapter analyzes visual representations of social movement contention in two local contexts, the cities of Lyon, France, and Helsinki, Finland. The material was collected during ethnographic fieldwork and consists of 505 images from local activist websites. The analysis asks how femininity, masculinity, and gender/sex ambiguity key visual representations of different aspects of contentious action, such as mass gatherings, violence, protest policing, and performativity. Strong converging features are found in the contents of the frames in the two contexts, yet differences also abound, in particular in the ways femininity keys different frames of contention in visual representations. The results show, first, that the visual frame analysis approach is a functioning tool for analyzing large sets of visual material with a qualitative emphasis, and second, that a comparison of local activism through visual representations calls into question many general assumptions of political cultures, repertoires of contention, and cultural gender systems, and highlights the importance for sociologists of looking closely enough for both differences and similarities.

Visual analytics is increasingly becoming a prominent technology for organizations seeking to gain knowledge and actionable insights from heterogeneous and big data to support decision-making. Whilst a broad range of visual analytics platforms exists, limited research has been conducted to explore the specific factors that influence their adoption in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for visual analytics adoption that synthesizes the factors related to the specific nature and characteristics of visual analytics technology.

This study applies a directed content analysis approach to online evaluation reviews of visual analytics platforms to identify the salient determinants of visual analytics adoption in organizations from the standpoint of practitioners. The online reviews were gathered from Gartner.com, and included a sample of 1,320 reviews for six widely adopted visual analytics platforms.

Based on the content analysis of online reviews, 34 factors emerged as key predictors of visual analytics adoption in organizations. These factors were synthesized into a conceptual framework of visual analytics adoption based on the diffusion of innovations theory and technology–organization–environment framework. The findings of this study demonstrated that the decision to adopt visual analytics technologies is not merely based on the technological factors. Various organizational and environmental factors have also significant influences on visual analytics adoption in organizations.

This study extends the previous work on technology adoption by developing an adoption framework that is aligned with the specific nature and characteristics of visual analytics technology and the factors involved to increase the utilization and business value of visual analytics in organizations.

This study highlights several factors that organizations should consider to facilitate the broad adoption of visual analytics technologies among IT and business professionals.

This study is among the first to use the online evaluation reviews to systematically explore the main factors involved in the acceptance and adoption of visual analytics technologies in organizations. Thus, it has potential to provide theoretical foundations for further research in this important and emerging field. The development of an integrative model synthesizing the salient determinants of visual analytics adoption in enterprises should ultimately allow both information systems researchers and practitioners to better understand how and why users form perceptions to accept and engage in the adoption of visual analytics tools and applications.

This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this purpose, a method of visual analysis is developed that draws mainly on semiotics and art history. Following this method, the contribution examines a selection of images (pictures and graphic design) from the anti-surveillance protests in three steps: description of components, detection of conventional signs, and contextual analysis. Furthermore, the analysis compares the images of the two major currents of the protest (liberal and radical left) in order to elucidate the context in which images are created and used. The analysis shows that images do not merely illustrate existing political messages but contribute to movements’ systems of meaning creation and transportation. The two currents in the protests communicate their point of view through the images both strategically and expressively. The images play a crucial role in formulating groups’ different strategies as well as worldviews and identities. In addition, the analysis shows that the meaning of images is contested and contextual. Images are produced and received in specific national as well as issue contexts. Future research should address the issue of context and reception in greater depth in order to further explore the effects of visual language on mobilization. Overall, the contribution demonstrates that systematic visual analysis allows our understanding of social movements’ aims, strategy, and collective identity to be deepened. In addition, visual analysis may provide activists with a tool to critically assess their visual communication.

This paper explores how public audit institutions establish themselves as distinct actors on the public stage through communication practices. By focussing on the journey of the European Court of Auditors (ECA), this paper addresses the following research question: how does a transnational audit institution construct its actorhood through visual communication practices?

Using the theoretical framework of actorhood theory and inspired by the visual accounting methodology, this study explores the ECA actorhood journey through the visual analysis of front pages of its official journal (ECA Journal) from its inception in 2009 up to 2019. The visual analysis is conducted through content analysis and a two-step cluster analysis.

By showing how combinations of different visual artefacts have evolved over time, this study highlights the ways transnational public audit institutions, such as the ECA, construct their actorhood and position themselves on the public stage. It further reveals the underlying legitimacy mechanisms through which organisations such as the ECA position themselves in the public eye.

This study sheds light on the depiction of individuals and their contexts in interaction with each other and how this interaction reveals the development of the actorhood journey of the ECA over time.

The purpose of this study is to examine cross-cultural differences in the use of visual tangible cues in local corporate Web sites of six nations.

A quantitative content analysis was used to obtain a numerically based summary of visual tangible cues utilized in 207 Web sites of global service corporations.

A clear pattern of differences was observed in the major visual functions (literal vs symbolic), the use of photographs vs illustrations and the utilization of interactive elements between two groups of nations. Eastern visuals tend to rely more on symbolic visuals performing association function, mixed use of photographs and illustrations and customer endorsement, whereas Western visuals are more likely to perform literal functions, use photographs and feature customer–employee interactions.

International services marketers who are planning a global campaign on the Web can benefit by using differentiated visual strategies, which reflect unique cultural characteristics of a target market.

This study adds a new contribution to an international account of Web services advertising in maintaining a comprehensive understanding of contemporary use of visual tangibles cues. It could benefit global services advertisers with both practical and theoretical implications, for no systematic studies have ever touched the visualization strategies on the Web.

This paper aims to propose a critical multimodal framework to understanding pedagogical materials that focuses on not only the verbal or the visual components but also the interaction between the two semiotic resources that constructs power relations as a result of intermodal interaction, and it further provides an example of an in-depth analysis of one text using this approach.

The paper proposes a critical multimodal framework that draws from Serafini (2010) and Royce (1998). Details about how the two works complement to form a critical multimodal framework are discussed, after which the paper analyzes one example from an English-language textbook using the proposed framework to demonstrate its strengths.

The findings highlight the power relations constructed in texts as a result of the interaction between the verbal and visual components, specifically how the visual mode functions to rationalize the power relations constructed in the verbal mode. These findings also establish the significance for considering the larger context of materials production and reception identified in the ideological perspective to appreciate how texts reflect discourses in diverse locales.

This paper argues that even though critical multimodality has often been discussed conceptually in L1 literacy scholarship, how to put these conceptualizations into practice has not been addressed systematically. The paper also contends that critical perspectives to understanding multimodal texts are also important in L2 English-language teaching. The critical multimodal framework proposed thus serves as a conceptual and methodological framework for multimodal reading and interpretive practices in both L1 and L2 contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of a user-centric service map to facilitate the visual exploration and monitoring of user context information for proactive market analysis.

The paper supports a context-based market analysis by developing a user-centric service map which comprehensively visualizes a variety of contexts, users, and services. Empirical data were gathered from service descriptions and reviews of 100 mobile application services in the Apple App Store’s lifestyle and healthcare and fitness categories.

The user-centric service map supports the analysis of the context information from using various mobile app services, and can therefore be effectively applied for market-segment analysis and user-value analysis.

The user-centric service map involves implications in terms of multi-disciplinary proactive market orientation and data-driven strategy development, allowing firms to respond to changing market conditions in the mobile business promptly and even preemptively.

The initiative uncovering of latent needs through examining context of use have been an important focus of prior work, but little attempt has been presented in the way of frameworks for converting abundant context data into strategic information. The paper provides new methods and procedures to establish and interpret service maps using flexible visual features.