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Shifting the focus from verbal to visual communication, Massimiliano Fusari discusses the role played by visual media in todayʼs communication processes by applying storytelling techniques specifically to international politics.
‘The present is visualʼ, argues Fusari:
as today 90%+ of all data on the internet is visual, in one form or another. Yet, communication has always been visual, and surely will continue to be so.
Visual communication is, and has always been, key to strategize effective and impactful messages across all sectors of societies and cultures. And now, to an unparalleled level, to fight the war of perceptions, and hence of nudging the hearts and minds, of international audiences on political issues.
When thinking about international relations, consider, for example, the following picture of King Charles III at COP28 in Dubai (see Image 1).
It was King Charlesʼ first international appearance as king, and he is wearing his formal attire, with a tie and a pochette. The imagery on these accessories, however, presents a less conventional choice, as Fusari points out:
it is a Greek flag endlessly multiplied on both accessories, which has been widely interpreted as an implicit sign of support for Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis over the recent quarrel he had with his UK counterpart for the return of the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum. To deplore his PMʼs attitude of refusing even to meet to discuss the matter, King Charles stated his position clearly yet silently, and managed to do so without any chance of being accused of interfering with the internal affairs of his government: it was his implicit way to explicitly communicate a strategic message.
‘Storytellingʼ, Fusari explains, ‘aims to align projected messages with perceived messages by strategically using the right combination of “formatˮ and “contentˮʼ. As the example above illustrates, visuals can be a formidable storytelling device for communicating intended messages, at both personal and social levels.
Building on this insight, Fusari delves into a case study to flesh out the role of visual storytelling in international relations. The case is that of the website saturday-october-seven.com, which was devised by its author(s) to denounce the attacks perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October 2023.
Addressing such a (politically) heated and (emotionally) sensitive topic cannot be done without explicitly stating that this contribution does not – in any way – form any part of the discussion of the military confrontation, as it aims to discuss solely the policy of communication of one of the actors without taking sides in any way. In addition, the images of these dramatic events are here presented as public documentation that is widely available in a multiplicity of media formats, but might, still, because of their content, hurt personal and/or public sensibilities.
Bracketing out any discussion or judgement of the events, to focus instead on the way in which the author(s) of the website have communicated their message, Fusari highlights how, already on the home page, there are some key details to focus on.
The first element that appears on the home page is a trigger warning: ‘This website contains extremely difficult to watch content from the terrible massacre carried out by Hamas on the seventh of Octoberʼ (see Image 2). As Fusari explains:
the warning is written in English, and this element leads us to speculate that the website is meant primarily for an English-speaking, and arguably international, audience. As there is no option to choose the website language, which is a rather common practice in international communication, we could easily assume that the intended policy of dissemination, either by conscious decision or language limitations, is indeed to target an English-speaking international audience.
The website domain was registered (as per the internet provider GoDaddy) on 19 October, twelve days after the events in question. As Fusari points out:
many alternative domain names were then and are still available almost a year later, and different options could have been chosen at that time, including, for instance, ‘october-sevenʼ. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that including ‘Saturdayʼ, the holy day for Jews, might be intended as a conscious and explicit reminder of the un-holiness dimension of the perpetrated attack.
This consideration is indirectly reinforced by the heading ‘HAMAS MASSACREʼ being consistently repeated and capitalized across all pages and sections of the website, which, combined with the dedicated email address provided (hamasmassacre@gmail.com), ‘explicitly restates the gravity of the attackʼ. Finally, Fusari notes:
all the materials on the website were uploaded on the very same day of the website purchase, with no changes since, which dramatically limits its appearance results on Google searches, as content updates are a key metric for positioning on the top of Googleʼs search engine.
Unsurprisingly, there are several different websites dedicated to the events that occurred on 7 October, each using different frameworks and approaches to storytelling, with varying communication strategies and dedicated supporting materials. In the case of saturday-october-seven.com, Fusari briefly addresses some basic concerns about the visual, with explicit reference to the design of the user interface (UI), or, in simpler terms, the look of the website.
As shown in the image above, ‘HAMAS MASSACREʼ is at the centre of the page to explicitly state the ‘missionʼ the website has taken on: that is, to collect ‘Documentation of Crimes against Humanityʼ (see Image 3). In the background there are two images: on the left an Israeli flag, on the right a picture that may show the outcome of one of the attacks. ‘Arguablyʼ, Fusari comments, ‘the visual connection is there to produce a [perception of] cause–effect relation with an explicitly stated agency, Hamasʼ. Next, between two short blurbs, a line of accusations presents a brief summary of the impact of the attack, in three points: ‘More than 1000 innocent civilians massacredʼ, ‘Raped and slaughtered in their own homesʼ, ‘Over 200 people kidnapped into Gazaʼ. Scrolling down the page, there is a more detailed articulation of the impact of the events by reference to four thematic galleries: ‘AFFECTED COMMUNITIESʼ, ‘SECURITY FORCES ATTACKʼ, ‘MUSIC FESTIVAL IN REʼIMʼ, and ‘MAP OF THE ATTACKED AREASʼ (see Image 4).
These galleries represent ‘storytelling categories used to lead the understanding of the eventsʼ and, once they are opened, ‘the same title for each section is repeated: “HAMAS MASSACREˮʼ. As Fusari argues, ‘this feature tends to be counterproductive when aiming to maximize communication impact, as it overall limits the user experienceʼ (UX). This, Fusari says,
might be because of any of these possibilities: either the website owner(s) might wish to restate their intended accusation over and over, or, possibly, the details of the UX, as a communication policy, might have been of secondary relevance to them in comparison to the gravity of the materials shared. Finally, a third option might be that the owner(s) might not have known how to diversify the heading structure.
Moreover, as Fusari points out, there is a discrepancy in the websiteʼs UX: the first three thematic galleries are dedicated photo galleries, but the fourth – a map – is shown as an overlaid single image and is not listed in the menu at the top left. Fusari interprets these inconsistencies with the possibility that the website might not have been professionally designed. Another possible reason, he adds, is that:
the focus of the website might have been to favour ‘contentʼ over ‘formʼ, assessing the former as strong enough to overlook the latter. Yet effective storytelling is that which produces an impact, and it delivers it by combining content with form in an intentional and finalized, and hence strategic, manner.
As Fusari argues,
visualization is information: the form you use to show something surely impacts, and oftentimes informs, its reception. For instance, whispering or screaming (as a strategy of communication) the same message produces rather different outcomes, and yet the right form depends on a variety of factors, including whether we actually wanted that message to be heard (intentionality). Raw messages communicate too, but they are not storytelling as they are not defined by strategy or intentionality. For instance, the same scream might come out your mouth because of a hammer mis-targeting your finger as you try to fix a nail on the wall, or as an intended call for help. One is intentional, the other is not. One is part of a strategy, the other is not.
Indeed, Fusari clarifies:
whereas anything has the potential to communicate, what explicitly differentiates storytelling from messages is its intentionality to use the ‘formʼ component (one of the strategic aspects) to its full potential. We are aware that any unequivocal differentiation of storytelling from messages would benefit from a more articulated review. For the present context, letʼs agree that visual storytelling refers to a visual message which has been intentionally enhanced with an intended communication strategy that takes full advantage of the specificities of its media form.
According to Fusari, on the saturday-october-seven.com website, various storytelling techniques could have been used to shape the visual messages more thoroughly and impactfully. Yet:
the overall impression is that images were dumped into the website without any criteria or strategy of communication. For whatever reason – rage, desperation, or simply inability, or disinterest in the formʼs potentiality – images are presented as ‘raw contentʼ with the implication that audiences should make sense of them by themselves. Arguably, images were perceived as ‘self-sustainingʼ their messages (the massacre by Hamas) as truly effective communication content, without requiring any further support by ‘formʼ.
The picture below, for example, could convey different messages by providing different captions and tags (see Image 5). Per se:
the image looks very much like a dramatic car accident that we could witness on any road everywhere. By providing verbal support in the form of a caption, or a tag, the visual content could have been better intended, and more effectively communicated.
Indeed, to reiterate the point raised above, raw messages are part of communication and surely communicate. Yet, images seldom, if ever, have an objective value in and of themselves: their meaning is contextualized. ‘One tactic of contextualizationʼ, Fusari continues:
is surely verbal support, in the form of a caption or a tag. Yet there is another tactic that might be even more impactful because it works in an implicit, rather than explicit (like a caption), manner, and this is sequencing images strategically.
For example, when accessing one of the thematic galleries on the saturday-october-seven.com website, the user is exposed to a wall of distressing images with no detectable order:
How would, or could, or indeed should the user read and make sense of these images? What is their starting point? What is their line of development? How does their number and grid of presentation influence the userʼs ability to read, understand, and finally appreciate their intended communication?
In asking this, Fusari stresses once again that ‘formʼ is ‘contentʼ: ‘the former without the latter underperforms its duties – and this is why storytelling should be conceived as the strategic combination of the two (content with form) to produce an impact.ʼ Indeed, in the case of the saturday-october-seven.com website:
by strategically ordering visual content and providing a revealing index to such order, the author(s) of the website could have led audiences to make sense of the presented materials in a way – hopefully – as close as possible to the way that was intended. Or, said otherwise, purposeful and strategic editing can help align projection with perception.
For example, Fusari goes on to explain:
combining the two images below [see Image 6] in the same frame strategically highlighted the before-and-after of the events of 7 October, capturing the cruelty and horror of the attacks by leading to an implicit identification of the five dead bodies in the bags as the five smiling people on the top left, and, eventually, as a family, which would add another layer of impactful emotions.
Importantly, all the above considerations merely scratch the surface of the extremely rich possibilities for communication that visual media offer: ‘By its own nature, visual communication endlessly articulates multiple and coexistent messages that visual storytelling fights to manage and articulate with intentionality by strategically engaging the form component.ʼ Eventually, Fusari admits:
my line of reasoning might prove to be nothing more than mere speculations, as whatever I might have seen (and hence interpreted) in those images and the website structure might actually prove to be nothing more than my own analytical journey of interpretations. After all, this is not so uncommon, precisely because of the dramatic volatility of visual meaning-making processes and the complexities of the human being.
In such a context, Fusariʼs explicit aim is to warn of the intricacies of the relations among the sender(s) and the receiver(s) of either intended or unintended messages because of the virtually infinite possibilities of interpretation(s) and reading(s) of the same communication materials. Fusari closes by adding that:
these complexities must be acknowledged and critically addressed, as even being aware of these dynamics, in itself, already represents already a basic level of visual competency, which remains key to todayʼs communication processes, whatever its formats. Unfortunately, when looking at images, nothing is ever for sure. Hence, visual storytelling is that set of dedicated tools required to channel the multifaceted explosions of meanings that images produce as messages by using intentionality and strategy to make projected messages one with perceived ones.
