📣 Kick-off of the International Workshop on #VisualMethodologies 👋Christophe Sohn welcomed attendees to @liser.lu for the 2 day event. 🗣️ Prof. @giorgiaaiello.bsky.social now presents: "(Why) does visual-material criticism matter in (post)digital urban research?" Info: www.liser.lu/events/inter...

📣 International Workshop on #VisualMethodologies 📅Dec. 2-3 at @liser.lu Strengthen your methodological expertise & foster new competencies in qualitative visual approaches as they offer a powerful means to engage critically w/ contemporary societal issues. 🚨 Register: www.liser.lu/events/inter...

On 10/12 I will be in Turin to participate in this conference on AI and visual communication as an invited speaker. My presentation will focus on the significance of types rather than stereotypes, of researching stock images, and of genericity w/r/t how gender is constructed through visual AI.

On December 2-3 I will be at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) for the invited seminar "Methodologies in Visual Narratives". tinyurl.com/msemhdh3 The title of my presentation is going to be "(Why) does visual-material criticism matter in (post)digital urban research?" 1/

📖 The #RoutledgeCompanionToVisualJournalism is now available for pre-order. It features a whopping 41 chapters over 524 pages and is richly accompanied by all types of visuals from photographs and screenshots to AI-generated images and data visualisations. 🇦🇺🇳🇿🔗: www.booktopia.com.au/the-routledg...

We invite applications for the 3rd edition of the Digital Methods for Consumer Studies summer school on the Lake Como (22-26 September).We have 3 fantastic keynotes: Joonas Rokka (Emlyon), @giorgiaaiello.bsky.social (University of Milan) & Gabriele Colombo (Density Design). Deadline June 6. Join us!

Here's the latest article from the Generic Visuas in the News project, this time about how media workers from three different UK news organizations use and relate to simple data visualizations and stock photos in journalistic practice. 1/https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14648849251342891

My paper for the Ethics and Aesthetics of Artificial Images conference is ready and I’m now on my way to Venice for this three-day international gathering: ai-venice2025.com

Looking forward to this event today with lovely colleagues and students from Paris, brilliant communication professionals and fab tutors and MA students from University of Milan!

The New York Times has installed *Visual Studies*, a series that explores how images move through and shape culture. Great to see this kind of public attention! Hopefully the academic field with its research traditions is reflected in future contributions too. www.nytimes.com/card/2025/04...

This is what you call two different readouts of the same meeting. Go Denmark, Go Greenland!

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Ali Solomon. #NewYorkerCartoons

AI ambient imagery in the city.

The plight of my generation. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

🤔 How would you fare with trying to sort photos from synthetic #AI images? Here's your opportunity to try it out. I had fun working with Michael Lucy and Matt Garrow on this interactive for @aunz.theconversation.com. theconversation.com/can-you-tell... @admscentre.org.au @ntsnetwork.bsky.social

If you want to know more about the AI side of style transfer and how it aligns with capitalist extraction in the creative industry, take a look at our #chi2025 paper: arxiv.org/abs/2409.17410

Here is the first article that was came out of the Generic Visuals in the News project in 2022, in the International Journal of Cultural Studies' special issue "COVID-19: The Cultural Constructions of a Global Crisis" (Paul Frosh and Myria Georgiou, Eds.). 1/ journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Free University Brussels is opening 12 postdoc fellowships focusing specifically on attracting censored American researchers www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1490...

join us for a talk on "visual methods for digital research" with Sabine Niederer & @gabrielecolombo.bsky.social on Thursday 27th March, 5-7pm 🖼️✂️✨ www.kcl.ac.uk/events/visua... @politybooks.bsky.social

‘Traditional’ stock photography is still alive and well in the pursuit of generic urban ambience, but I have to say that its subjects seem to smile even harder than just a few years ago.

Cracking the Magafacists code

In 2023 I wrote this OA article for the relaunch of the fab @jvpcjournal.bsky.social, where I outlined ways to move beyond research on disinformation and effects to foreground the cultural and historical underpinnings of political visual meaning-making. 1/ intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

In this #onlinefirst article, Helen Kennedy, @giorgiaaiello.bsky.social, @taylorannabell.bsky.social and C W Anderson argue that generic visuals in the news do, in fact, function as public images, connecting and engaging audiences in public life. Read here: doi.org/10.1177/1367...

A great way to end my second to last week of teaching for this academic year: a hands-on workshop on visual generative AI with the fab @giuliagiorgi26.bsky.social and Ilir Rama, where Visual Communication students used a variety of prompts to ‘generate generations’ through DALL-E on Bing.

Many thanks to @gabrielecolombo.bsky.social for his brilliant lecture on prompt design for visual digital research as part of my Visual Communication seminar series at University of Milan today.

"Capitalism Stole Our Whole World. Take it Back Now!" Sticker seen in Vancouver, Canada

Today @abri1s.bsky.social gave a brilliant guest lecture in my MA course on Visual Communication at University of Milan, where she spoke about her insightful research on AI images of the Israel-Palestine war. A meaningful way to end yet another teaching week.

Finally online: My essay on #PlatformRealism for #Transbordeur. There couldn't be a more appropriate day to publish it, even though when I wrote it last year I couldn't have imagined the extent to which the aesthetics of AI slop would become the basis of a new #MemeFascism

ICYMI

**Hot off the press** A new open-access article from the Generic Visuals in the News project on news audiences' engagements with stock photos and simple data visualizations: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 1/

I really enjoyed this conversation about AI-generated imagery and more - very many thanks to @melhogan.bsky.social and @bildoperationen.bsky.social.

These guys love AI slop because it perfectly encapsulates their contempt for all that is true and meaningful, their narcissistic need for control, and their utter lack of imagination

Here's some more ambient AI imagery, this time not in physical urban space, but in the digital spaces of banal, everyday online consumption.

A great (so to speak) example of AI-generated urban ambient imagery. Thanks @bildoperationen.bsky.social!

Racist Technology in Action: Grok’s total lack of safeguards against generating racist content racismandtechnology.center/2025/02/10/r...

Well, it’s here. AI images (or AI slop?) as urban ambient imagery. Pictured here, an ad for the Italian national lottery.

It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right argues @garethwatkins.bsky.social newsocialist.org.uk/transmission...

Milano

Another thing: if you have serious disagreement with an analysis that also addresses issues that you are concerned with, choose the long form, write substantially, avoid snide social media remarks

Read to Respond: Trans Rights/Trans Studies - a reading list addressing trans rights and politics on a global scale. View the full list of books, journals, and articles on our blog: https://buff.ly/4aIkfuW All articles are free to read through 6/30/2025!

Today, in my Visual Communication class, I covered the research on trans self-representation that @katyjparry.bsky.social and I included in our book five years ago. Then, the issue of trans visibility was timely from a social/cultural standpoint but also vital on a political level. And so it is now.

I’m in Oslo this week — info for my talk on Friday: www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/englis...

Michel Pastoureau is one of my favorite scholars of the visual ever, so much so that Theo Van Leeuwen and I have even written a journal article about him. Still going strong, now with a new book on the cultural history of the color pink.

If you watch only one short video today, make it this one. Remarkable bravery, and the looks on the various faces could be material for a dissertation on gender, the family, and authoritarianism. youtu.be/gVInX42IQD8?...

I've been invited to join the editorial board of the top journal Critical Studies in Media Communication. My tenure will begin in 2026, but I may very well start reviewing submissions in my areas of expertise this year. shorturl.at/tASVh

TIL about the mathematics of animating Black hair: www.allure.com/story/first-...

People don't understand that shows can have GOOD politics but anything that is the result of a massive corporation funding millions of dollars in budget and produced via a corporate pipeline of approval and edits can't be RADICAL, it just ain't how it works

There appears to be a Korean... fashion brand(?) called "Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies" and I don't know what's going on any more.

For the first time ever, I’m teaching an extended version (60 hours instead of only 30 or 20) of my now classic visual communication course, so I got to watch and discuss the first episode of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing with my students today. It was great.