(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
The first visual comparison already shows significant variations, firstly between the
two countries and secondly evolutionarily, when each journal cover is observed along
a temporal axis. These visual differences allow us to construct the hypothesis, using
the vocabulary of systems theory, that journal covers in both countries, understood as
subsystems within the system of the mass media, developed different programs for the
treatment of the same irritations from the system’s environment. Furthermore, the
second hypothesis concludes that these programmes developed themselves in the
systems autopoietically for the purpose of producing elements and operations of
visual attention. The proposed communication program for the sub-system of news
magazine covers therefore operates with the code: “attention / non-attention”. The
proposed internal mode of communication is “orientation”; and the external mode is
“interest”.
4. Visual-Explorative Analysis
The operativity of deliberate production and the control of visual attention is based on
the three operational modes mentioned above of: Attention, Orientation and Interest,
which may be best understood if we evaluate the composition of the magazine covers
through visual content analysis. For this purpose I will use two visual explorative
methods. In the following example consisting of two journal covers, “Polityka” and
“Der Spiegel” (both dating from June 1996), these methods are demonstrated.
Following the visual material one can assume that in the creation of the journals’
covers the existing design intentions are based on the multi-staged process of
489