2026-10-07T14:58:59Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34030140 2026-10-01T00:53:26Z category_32360 category_35993 portal_827 item_type_6 month_year_10_2026

Visibility, Power, and the Battle for Truth in an AI Age T.J. Thomson (18041371) Ryan J Thomas (20545415) Shangyuan Wu (20847725) Iuliia Alieva (25141977) Creative and professional writing Communication and media studies visual journalism visual communication multimodal communication trust in visuals the gaze generative AI visual news Visual journalism has always been a subjective practice involving questions of power. Whether conveyed through photographs, videos, illustrations, or as data, visual journalism is the process of making some elements more visible and others less so. The means by which this happens and how certain people, topics, or events are shown and represented carries symbolic and political weight. Hence, the link between visibility and power cannot be overstated. The contributions to this special issue examine how technological change is reshaping the forms, practices, power relations, and epistemic foundations of visual journalism. The special issue pushes back against logocentrism, considers how algorithms and GenAI are expanding the gaze, and reflects on the contours of the scholarly field and on how the changing nature and forms of visuals are affecting visual style and representational patterns. It also centres power as inseparable from the making, use, and manipulation of visuals. Ultimately, this special issue ponders the implications of not being able to trust our eyes, and muses about the epistemic crisis GenAI has created, which might harm our vision of a shared reality, more broadly, and the production and reception of visual news, in particular.<p></p> 2026-09-29T00:00:00Z Text Journal contribution 10779/rmit.34030140 https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Visibility_Power_and_the_Battle_for_Truth_in_an_AI_Age/34030140 All rights reserved Open Access after 2028-03-29