Interactive Visual Argument: Online News Graphics and the Iraq War (Report‪)‬

This paper takes up the subject of visual argument in an interactive environment--by examining a New York Times online graphic that invites user participation to explore the stories of those who have died in the Iraq War. Visual argument is an extension of argumentation theory; its advocates contend that static, primarily non-discursive images may be able to advance and support claims (Blair, 1996; Medhurst & DeSouza, 1981). With interactive images, a key term of interest here, the invitation is open for user participation and engagement in ways that reshape and transform what would have been a still image--primarily through online experiences. Scholars have explored how visual arguments may be the result of a pattern of thinking that may only be expressed visually (Shelley, 1996). And we have been able to suggest ways of thinking about visual argument in a larger cultural context, interpreting images within their immediate visual and verbal context and within the larger visual cultural as a whole (Birdsell & Groarke, 1996; Finnegan, 2001). This has been sufficient to some to suggest that the images themselves may enacting be arguments with their own vocabulary and syntax (Lake & Pickering, 2004).