Design as a Means of Creating a Journalistic Image in Infographics

Abstract

Infographics as one of the most popular types of media text attracts the attention of researchers. However, the analysis criteria and evaluation of a new information presentation issue is still underresearched. From this point of view, a comprehensive analysis of infographics seems relevant, including both the study of its functionality and the study of ways to create a media image. The article attempts to determine the role of design techniques in terms of the selection and systematization principles, as well as the functioning peculiarities. Design solutions are considered in the context of the journalistic potential of infographics in the present study. That is reflected in expressing the author’s position, in updating socially significant information, in turning a real fact into a media image, as well as in organizing a dialogue between the addresser and the addressee on the basis of co-creation. The dialectical unity of the traditional functions for a journalistic text and design creativity is under consideration. The unity includes such journalistic functions as informational, communicative, and ideological, combined with the design, as well as aesthetic, cultural-formative, and enlightening function. An attempt to summarize theoretical observations supported by examples of infographics by web-sites TASS. Infographics and RIA Novosti news agency. The analysis was based on the following methods: semantic, functional, structural and compositional, discursive, art history. The big data combined in an infographics into a vivid image is not only visualized and systematized, but it is also personalized. So modern multimedia technologies have formed a new type of recipient, who is required of information perception involvement. The infographics considered in the present study provides a means of characterizing new principles of communication based on active participation in the process of perceiving media text, and, therefore, in the formation of a media image based on the information received. The study offers the possibility to conclude that the analysis and evaluation of infographics requires an integrated approach: dialectical unity of the criteria and elements, both of journalistic work, and of design as a part of time-tested art, are necessary. Keywords: infographics, design, journalism, media image, communication