Evaluating messages and images
How to read, hear and view messages critically: word meaning, bias, propaganda, fallacies, signs, public and online signage, sources and the meaning of images.
Why we evaluate what we read, hear and see
Every day you meet messages you did not ask for: a jeepney sign, a tarpaulin across a barangay road, a billboard on EDSA, a sari-sari store poster, a Facebook post forwarded to the family group chat. Most want something from you: your vote, your money, your share button. Evaluating a message means deciding how far it deserves your trust.
In Purposive Communication this skill is called critical reading, critical listening and critical viewing. Critical does not mean negative. It means careful: you ask questions before you accept, reject or pass on a message.
1. Critical reading, listening and viewing
A critical reader, listener or viewer asks the same questions whatever the medium. Who made this message? What is its purpose, and who is the audience? What is said, and what is left out? How is it said: which words, sounds, colours and pictures were chosen, and what do they suggest?
Listening needs the same care: a radio ad with a warm voice and cheerful music may carry few facts. So does viewing: someone chose what to put in a photograph's frame.
2. Denotation and connotation
Denotation is the literal meaning of a word, the one a dictionary gives. Connotation is the layer of feeling, attitude and association the word carries in a community. Two words can have almost the same denotation and very different connotations.
| Neutral or positive word | Loaded word | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| slim | skinny | The first sounds like a compliment, the second like a criticism. |
| thrifty | cheap | Both describe someone who spends little; one praises, one blames. |
| informal settler | squatter | Both refer to people living on land they do not legally own; the second sounds harsher and more insulting. |
Connotation is how writers and advertisers steer your feelings without making a claim you can test: a sari-sari store poster that calls its coffee rich and homey uses warm words that cannot be checked. Connotations also depend on culture and context; a colour's feeling is not universal.
3. Purpose, audience and bias
Every message has a purpose. The four common purposes are to inform, persuade, entertain and express the writer's feelings. One usually dominates: a weather bulletin mainly informs, a loan billboard persuades, a diary post expresses.
The audience is the group a message is designed for. You can often work it out from the language (English, Filipino or a mix), the tone, the slang, the pictures and the place where the message appears.
Bias is a leaning towards one side that affects how a message treats its subject. Everyone has some, but a critical reader notices it. It shows up through loaded words, through selection and omission (showing only some facts, quotes or photos), through emphasis (favourable points on top, unfavourable ones in a footnote) and through one-sided sources.
4. Facts and opinions
A fact is a statement that can be checked against evidence and shown true or false. An opinion is a judgment, preference or belief; people can disagree about it, and no measurement settles it. Opinion words include best, worst, should and beautiful.
| Statement | Kind | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The Philippines has more than 7,000 islands. | Fact | It can be checked against official maps and records. |
| Jeepney art is the most beautiful in the world. | Opinion | “Most beautiful” is a judgment; it cannot be measured. |
Two cautions. A fact can be false: “Cebu is the largest island in the Philippines” can be checked, so it is a statement of fact, but it is wrong (Luzon is larger). And many sentences are mixed: “The overpass, which opened last year, is ugly” holds a checkable fact and an opinion. Separate the parts before you judge them.
5. Persuasion and propaganda
Persuasion is the use of language and images to influence what people believe or do. It is honest when its aim is open and its reasons can be examined. Propaganda works mainly through emotion and tricks, often hides its source or aim, and avoids a balanced picture. In 1937 the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the United States described seven common devices, still the standard classroom list.
| Device | What it does | Philippine-style example |
|---|---|---|
| Bandwagon | Says everyone is doing or choosing it, so you should too. | “Everybody in our barangay has switched to Kape Bida. Don't be left out!” |
| Testimonial | Uses a famous or admired person to endorse a product or idea. | A well-known basketball player on a billboard says he drinks only one brand of energy drink. |
| Glittering generalities | Uses vague, highly positive words (freedom, progress, greatness) that sound good but promise nothing specific. | “A brighter future and a better life for every Filipino!” |
| Name-calling | Attaches a negative label to a person or idea in place of evidence. | “Don't listen to that clown; he is a puppet of the rich.” |
| Plain folks | Presents the speaker as an ordinary person like the audience, to win trust. | A wealthy candidate eats at a carinderia in a simple T-shirt, saying “I am one of you.” |
| Card stacking | Lists only the favourable facts and hides the unfavourable ones. | A herbal-tea poster lists three benefits but not the price or who should avoid it. |
| Transfer | Links a person or product with something respected or loved, so the good feeling carries over. | A candidate's picture is placed beside the national flag and a church. |
6. Logical fallacies (introductory)
A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning: the argument may sound convincing, but its conclusion does not follow from its reasons.
| Fallacy | The flaw | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Ad hominem | Attacks the person making the argument instead of the argument itself. | “Ignore her bike-lane proposal; she once failed a driving test.” |
| Hasty generalization | Draws a broad conclusion from too few or unrepresentative examples. | “Two of my online orders arrived late, so all online shops are unreliable.” |
| False dilemma | Presents only two choices when more exist. | “Either we ban all tricycles from the highway or accidents will never stop.” |
| Slippery slope | Claims one small step will inevitably lead to a chain of disasters, without showing the links. | “If we let students wear slippers on Fridays, soon nobody will wear a uniform and discipline will collapse.” |
| Appeal to authority | Treats a claim as true because a famous or powerful person said it, though that person is no expert on the subject or no evidence is given. | “A famous singer says this tea cures diabetes, so doctors must be wrong.” |
7. Reading signs: icon, index, symbol
The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce divided signs into three kinds, by how a sign is connected with what it stands for.
- An icon resembles what it stands for. A stick-figure on a restroom door works by likeness.
- An index is linked to its object by a real, often causal, connection: smoke points to fire, a fever to illness, a flood mark on a wall to the height the water reached, a weathervane to the wind's direction.
- A symbol works only by convention, an agreement of a community. Words are symbols; so are national flags and the red of a traffic light.
Real signs often combine kinds: a pedestrian sign has a walking figure (iconic) in a shape and colour fixed by the traffic code (symbolic). Decide which connection does the main work.
8. The linguistic landscape and geosemiotics
Rodrigue Landry and Richard Bourhis (1997) used linguistic landscape for the visibility of languages on public signs: public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs and signs on government buildings. They described two functions. The informational function tells you which languages are used in an area; the symbolic function signals the status, power and identity of languages and their communities: an English-only sign in a town where most people speak Filipino informs few readers, yet may say something about prestige. Researchers also separate top-down signs (government) from bottom-up signs (shops, individuals).
Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon, in Discourses in Place (2003), proposed geosemiotics: the study of how the meaning of signs depends on their place in the material world. It combines three systems: the interaction order (how people arrange themselves and interact around the sign), visual semiotics (the design and layout of the sign) and place semiotics (the meaning that comes from where the sign stands and how it is put there). A sign cannot be fully read without its place.
9. Online landscapes and memes
Profile names, captions, hashtags, comment threads and subtitles form an online landscape that can be studied like a street: which languages appear, who posts them and what they signal. Filipinos online often mix Filipino and English, and the mix can carry meaning, such as a casual tone or an insider joke.
A meme in the internet sense is a piece of content, usually an image with a short caption, that people copy and change as it spreads. Richard Dawkins coined the word in The Selfish Gene (1976) for a unit of culture that spreads by imitation. Read a meme critically: what template does it depend on, do image and caption work together, does it make a claim about a person or group, and has the image been altered? Memes travel without their original context and can carry a false claim.
10. Evaluating sources and spotting misinformation
Misinformation is false or misleading information spread without intent to harm, such as sharing an old flood advisory believing it is current. Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive, such as an edited screenshot made to ruin a rival. The same tools check both. The CRAAP test, from librarians at California State University, Chico, has five criteria:
| Criterion | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Currency | When was it published or updated? Is that recent enough for this topic? (Health news ages fast; a poem does not.) |
| Relevance | Does it answer your question and suit your audience, at the right level of detail? |
| Authority | Who is the author or publisher? What are their qualifications? |
| Accuracy | Is it supported by evidence you can confirm in other reliable sources? |
| Purpose | Why does it exist: to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade? Is the bias clear? |
- Read laterally. Open new tabs and see what other reliable sources say about the claim and the site that posted it.
- Find the original. A reverse image search can show whether a photo is older than its caption claims.
- Check the official source: for a weather warning, PAGASA; for a new regulation, the issuing agency.
- Notice the pressure. Posts that shout SHARE NOW BEFORE IT IS DELETED! ask you to share before you check.
11. Reading images: composition, framing and text–image relation
Images feel natural, but they are made. Composition is how elements are arranged inside the picture. What is large, central, bright or in sharp focus draws the eye first; blurred or small things recede. Empty space around a small figure can suggest loneliness or smallness.
Framing is what the picture includes and excludes, and from where it is seen. A close-up invites emotional involvement; a long shot shows the whole scene and invites distance and context. A low angle (looking up at the subject) tends to make it look powerful; a high angle (looking down) tends to make it look small or weak; an eye-level view feels equal.
Text–image relation is how words and pictures work together. Roland Barthes described two common relations. In anchorage, the words fix one meaning for an image that could be read several ways. In relay, words and image each add different information, and the message is completed only by reading both. A caption may also clash with the image, as in irony or a misleading post.
12. Putting it together
Ask in order: who and why (source, purpose, audience); what and how (words, devices, images, place); is it sound (facts, reasoning); and is it trustworthy (CRAAP). Then decide: believe, doubt, check further, or do not share.