How Does Color Affect Our View of the World
Transcriber: نسيم بكر
Reviewer: Hani Eldalees
How do you get your news?
Maybe you’re a little more old school
and you prefer newspapers,
physical or digital.
Maybe you have a favorite TV or radio
station like Fox News or CNN, which,
by the way, is the most common form
of news reception among Americans.
But what sets this generation apart is
the rise in popularity of social media to
get their news, and it makes sense.
Social media is readily available,
concise and visually appealing.
I’d like to focus on that last part,
visually appealing.
People like social media
sites like Instagram,
because it summarizes everything you
need to know into one to 10 images,
and it’s much faster to look at a photo
than it is to read an entire article.
Now, photos have been used in journalism
since the beginning,
but never has it become more prominent
than in 2021,
which saw images such as this,
which highlights the humanitarian crisis
currently happening in Yemen.
Or this one, which juxtaposes
the image of
the first female African-American
vice president, Kamala Harris,
against that of Ruby Bridges,
the first African-American child to
desegregate American schools in the 60s.
Now, social media is a fantastic tool
for activists and journalists alike,
but as photos become more and more
critical to the sharing of news on
the Internet, it’s imperative that we
understand the subtle implications that
the presentation of a photo can have.
Take this, for example, in this photo,
framing plays a critical role in
the underlying message that
the girl is trying to convey.
If she had been, for example, centered
instead of off center,
you wouldn’t have been able to see the
White House in the background.
And her pressure for federal
legislation on
the issue she’s promoting
would have been lost.
In the fall of 2019,
I set out to find what effects color
can have on the interpretation
and emotional impact of photojournalism.
To do this, I focused on photojournalism
regarding the Arab Spring,
a series of anti-government
and pro-democracy uprisings that
spread across North Africa and
the Middle East starting in 2010.
Now, this conflict is known
as being one of
the first major world conflicts to be held
entirely in the social media age,
meaning photojournalism played a larger
role in the global understanding of
the Arab Spring than most any
other conflict to date.
Color is surprisingly often overlooked
in most analysis of photojournalism,
but I think that’s a big mistake.
Look at these photos, the one
on the left was published by
the Associated Press and the
one on the right Rooters.
Now, both photos are almost identical.
They were taken in the same
place at the same time.
Both photos were taken by major
photojournalism publication companies.
Companies that have been cited by news
outlets across the country. And yet.
The photos feel different. The one on
the left is vibrant and active.
The one on the right, slower, older.
Now, this could be because of
subtle framing differences,
but the fact remains that the color of the
photos have a major role in the tone
and message that the photos
are trying to convey.
For my study, I focused on six color
groups, red, yellow, green,
blue and black and white, in addition
to the original color scheme.
I then gathered eight photos of various
points during the Arab Spring,
all of which were posted to news
and social media sites
for journalistic purposes.
I took the photos and edited them
into the six color schemes
and ended up with something like this.
As you can see, we have the original photo
surrounded by the red, yellow,
green, blue and black and white photos,
by doing this,
I eliminate any influence that
other photographic elements,
such as framing or otherwise might have
On the interpretation of the
photos by the participants.
I separated the photos into six
surveys divided by color,
never explicitly mentioning color and
featuring a grayscale design so
as to eliminate any outside influence.
I started the survey by asking my audience
what they already knew about
the Arab Spring, which to my Southern
California audience was little to nothing.
I then proceeded to show each of the
participants the photos individually,
and ask them questions based on
their reaction to the photo.
What does this make you feel?
Would this catch your eye in the news?
Those sorts of things? I ended my survey
with the same benchmark that
I started it with so as to measure the
amount of information collected by
the participants as they went
through the survey.
I was able to take the responses and
compile them into a spreadsheet where
I literally counted each
individual adjective,
and when I tell you it was tedious,
I mean tedious.
I categorize each answer as either
positive, negative or neutral,
depending on the connotation
of the word given.
I then was able to give each photo
a number in each of those categories based
on the total number of responses
and the number of responses in each
category that were given.
By doing this, I was able to compare
the color surveys with
the original survey. The control group of
the study and find my final results
as laid out in this table.
As you can see, the red and yellow color
groups were much more likely to elicit
a positive response, whereas the black
and white color group was much more likely
to elicit a negative response.
When compared with the original group.
The only statistically significant
difference came in the red,
yellow and black and white color groups.
So what does this mean?
Right off the bat, the cool colors,
green and blue,
have little to no impact on the overall
understanding of the photo.
Well, it could be argued that
it made it less boring,
as in more positive or negative responses
instead of neutral responses.
It wasn’t enough in either direction to
be a statistically significant change.
Now, at the same time, the red and
yellow groups, the warm colors,
elicited a positive response,
a passionate response.
On the flip side, the black and white
color group, a negative response,
a more passive response.
So what does
this mean for photojournalist’s?
On a broad level, it means that
photographers have to pay attention to
the colors being showcased in their photos
as they do have an effect on
the viewer and it can create
unintentional bias.
On a much smaller scale. Photojournalist’s
now have another weapon
in their arsenal to control the
message of their photo.
Photographers are always trying to
tell a story with their photos,
but that can be difficult when
you’re trying to capture
a live moment that’s out of your
control like a protest.
This information will allow journalists
to have control over their photos in
a way that has never been able to be
expressed to such a wide audience in
the twenty first century. As a viewer,
you have the power to identify your own
biases in your news consumption
and spreading. So the next time you’re
on Instagram and you see a post that
the world has to see right now,
maybe before hitting Sure.
You take a second to ask yourself what
this photo actually means.
Thank you.