The first of the mechanisms Horarik analyses is “whether or not people are depicted specifically or generically.” Thus whether I, in relation to my opening line, am identified on a first name basis and thus brought closer to the audience, or merely left generic, unknown, and am therefore alienated (or seperated) from the audience of the text. Horarik furthers the dimension through the analysis of a key photograph used in the “asylum seekers over board” affair. Establishing that the asylum seekers are left ”unknown, identities hidden”, through the blurring of their faces. The audience must then rely solely on the caption to gain any information of identity, and then alienated through generic, or generalised naming “the asylum seekers”.
Horarik’s second dimension of analysis, refers to how individuals are categorised within texts, either through functionalism or identification. The media text can look to refer people ‘functionally’, through naming by what one does, e.g. the opening line of my post generalising me as a “University student”; or by ‘identification, where individuals are named by what they are, regarding race, gender, or religious background, e.g. “Black gangster, Arab extremist”. Both techniques certain representations, immediately touching upon an audiences system of beliefs to create certain “stereotypical images” surronding the group, e.g. Muslim= bomb (as racist as it may sound/as sad as it may be.)
The third an final dimension Horarik refers to is the allocation of roles, revolving around the “visual and verbal transitivity (relation between terms) of representation.” She identifies how individual images create general divisions between those depicted, representing them as either ”actors” or “goals”. Horarik refers to the asylum seeker image, once more, establishing the passive representations of the “bobbing asylum seekers” whilst exemplifying the active nature of the naval women rescuing them. Through this identification, Horarik claims that such role allocation works to position the asylum seekers as desperate and weak, whilst acclaiming the naval women as powerful and compassionate.
Horarik argues that when these three dimensions overlap or conflate in a media story, clear yet very different representations, surrounding minorities such as the “asylum seekers”, and prominant government officials or “actors” can be, and are, ably established.
And, as Horarik and myself would agree, it’s by no mistake.
