Valerie V Peterson
Dr. Valerie V. Peterson is a Professor of Communication Studies who has written about visual communication, rhetoric, communication theory, sex and sexuality, media ecology, popular culture, and pedagogy. Her book Sex, Ethics, and Communication: A Humanistic Approach to Conversations on Intimacy, 2nd ed. (2013, Cognella Academic Press) won the Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction from the Media Ecology Association. Other published work includes academic articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries on such topics as rhetorical and communication theory, visual rhetoric, argument and identity, Sophistic thought, interdisciplinarity, media ecology, sexual politics, and popular culture. She was the managing editor of Explorations in Media Ecology (2008-2010), co-planner of the Media Ecology Association Convention in Grand Rapids in 2013, keynote speaker at the Communication and Social Action Conference on Ethics at Central Michigan University in 2014, and she teaches Concepts of Communication, Vision and Culture, Critical Interpretation, and other courses at Grand Valley State University in Allendale and Grand Rapids, Michigan (B. A. and M. A. University of Virginia, Ph. D. University of Iowa) [email protected].
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Papers by Valerie V Peterson
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and that this forgetfulness about the
good is partly the result of literacy and literate-mindedness. Eric
A. Havelock’s work on literacy in the ancient world informs a
media ecological and rhetorical approach to the allegory, “the
forms,” and related writings in both The Republic and secondary
literature. Analysis shows how many literate-minded readers have
taken Plato’s allegory out of its textual and media ecological
context, and underestimated the significance of “the good” as a
form and ethical idea.
In this paper, I argue that neither advocacy of education in visual media literacy nor increased hopes about using visuals to connect people across cultures is a particularly helpful response to technological advances in visual communication and the proliferation of visual images. While hopeful attitudes are useful and improved communication is important, looking to visual media for these sorts of communicative capacities is unwise for two main reasons. First, visuals are poor media of expression and description. Second, there are significant phenomenological effects of visuals that become troubling when they overpower the balancing effect afforded by other human senses. For these reasons, it would be unwise to advocate directing scholarly, political, and/or educational resources to studies or programs concerned primarily with visual communication or visual media literacy, despite the seemingly innate appeal of such a focus on the surface.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and that this forgetfulness about the
good is partly the result of literacy and literate-mindedness. Eric
A. Havelock’s work on literacy in the ancient world informs a
media ecological and rhetorical approach to the allegory, “the
forms,” and related writings in both The Republic and secondary
literature. Analysis shows how many literate-minded readers have
taken Plato’s allegory out of its textual and media ecological
context, and underestimated the significance of “the good” as a
form and ethical idea.
In this paper, I argue that neither advocacy of education in visual media literacy nor increased hopes about using visuals to connect people across cultures is a particularly helpful response to technological advances in visual communication and the proliferation of visual images. While hopeful attitudes are useful and improved communication is important, looking to visual media for these sorts of communicative capacities is unwise for two main reasons. First, visuals are poor media of expression and description. Second, there are significant phenomenological effects of visuals that become troubling when they overpower the balancing effect afforded by other human senses. For these reasons, it would be unwise to advocate directing scholarly, political, and/or educational resources to studies or programs concerned primarily with visual communication or visual media literacy, despite the seemingly innate appeal of such a focus on the surface.