AZENTEC IMAGE ANALYSIS SERVICES

Deconstructing - or separating images apart through the use of intricate detail - is an essential part of studying the media. Media texts are largely constructed of images, and we take our visual literacy – and our ability to interpret and understand these images - largely for granted. However, in Media Studies we must be able to clarify that decoding process, and portray the steps taken which allow us to derive meaning A from text B.

Two processes used for the period of deconstruction are denotation and connotation, key words for Media Studies, and ones that ought to emerge in every piece of textual analysis you write.

1. Identification and definition of elements of a text on a basic, dictionary level - this thing is red, it is a bicycle. Denotational readings will be common to a large number of people - the audience of a text will all identify the object as a red bicycle (if they know what a bicycle is...)
2. Connotation begins when you link an object with other signs and meanings - the bicycle might belong to a teenager and therefore suggest adolescence. It is red, therefore it is bright and eyecatching and might therefore connote that its owner is an extrovert. If you once fell off a bicycle yourself and smashed your leg up then you may associate this bicycle with negativity and pain. Connotations are numerous, and vary from reader to reader.