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Together with three other researchers in visual studies:

Jenni Mäenpää, Researcher and PhD student, Tampere Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication – COMET, University of Tampere;
Mari Pienimäki, Licentiate, PhD student, Research Center for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyväskylä;
Nanna Särkkä, Project researcher and PhD student at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture;

I designed a project “Visuality in Journalism: Collaborative Perspective”. Project has a form of a network or a support group for PhD students in visual communication. It received a start-up grant from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Jyväskylä.

Here is a basic description of the main idea of the project:

Contemporary press is getting more and more visual; a large part of meanings is conveyed in other ways than with text. However, far too little attention has been paid to the visual. There is also far too little understanding of how the visuality works. Journalism research as well as a curriculum in journalism is still focusing mainly on text, marginalizing an understanding of images, photographs, graphics and layout. Therefore, there is a need for a cross-disciplinary approach to visuality in journalism.

The aim of this project is to stimulate discussion on different elements of visual communication in print media, i.e. layout, photojournalism, press photography, genre, context, and to confront divers research interests and approaches to visuality in journalism. As an outcome, project members plan to write one or two scientific articles for the peer-reviewed journals.