Audience Perception of Newspapers' Editorial Cartoons as Communication Medium (original) (raw)

2020, International Journal of Media, Journalism and Mass Communications

Background to the Study Visual communicators concentrate on a wide range of distinct techniques to get their point across: photography, digital design, distinctive illustrations, presentations, and even animations, all fall under their wide training and expertise umbrella. While there is more training for visual communicators, graphic designers are not. Their focus is on designing and creating key graphics for insertion of digital and print media, websites, mobile apps, and more. Their focus is restricted to designing and developing main graphics for digital and print media insertion, websites, mobile apps, and more. These two kinds of experts together, however, make it simpler to communicate the main points and marketing attempts of a company in a manner that is bright, vivid and graphically attractive, regardless of the type of media being used (Fahmy, Bock and Wanta, 2014). Visual images can induce powerful feelings and distinct interpretations as they are used to outsource verbal activities and add to the potential social implications of these pictures being disseminated publicly. They may also have a projective role in the sense that they can generate connections between various issues (Naghy, 2010). Not only in cartoons, but also in social life, humour is a very significant characteristic. Humour is used to differing degrees in cartoons; some cartoons give the audience a smile without being funny, while others are so ridiculous that individuals laugh at them. There are no humour laws, but there are aspects that most individuals may agree with (Mwetulundila and Kangira, 2015). The production of images that are pictures and other illustrative materials is concerned with all visual arts. When these pictures are used in book publishing to convey specific Abstract: Editorial, also known as political cartoons are hand-drawn pictures that occupy a single or multiple pictorial frames, frequently complemented by voice bubbles and subtitles referred to as utterances, with written text and serving as an indicator of discussion that the readers are supposed to interpret with the purpose of communicating a message to either a single person, authority or the public. Considered within the theoretical relevance influenced by the assumptions of the Hermeneutic Theory and Symbolic Interactionism Theory, the paper examined the audience perception of newspapers' editorial cartoons as medium of dissemination of information and social agenda setting. It adopted the hermeneutic analysis and survey research methods; while questionnaire served as the research instrument with twenty seven (27) items on it and two selected Nigerian national newspapers-The Punch and The Guardian newspapers-published between January 2017 and December, 2017 were considered on the basis of geographical spread and availability. The analysis carried out revealed that cartoons are used to achieve communicative tasks in Nigerian print media and are creatively used to set agenda thereby providing political commentary and debate in humorous and crafty fashion through which social realities are reflected in the nation's wider socio-political arena. The paper proposes that print media management and cartoonists should not only see cartoons as an entertaining medium, but should also concentrate on how graphic images and messages can be readily understood with suitable drawings, texts and captions, thus serving as a platform for the dissemination of messages.