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Within and Across the Media Borders
release as information. Images circulated through the same communication chan¬
nels and took the same position as the media content in the past. Giddens stressed
the point that "most of the media preserve a sense of ‘privileged place’ in respect
of their own position—giving a bias towards local news—but only against the
backcloth of the pre-eminence of the event” (Ibid.: 27). In this way media commu¬
nication channels emerged as a kind of a “third space”, transmitting information
and content across a long distance. In words of Giddens, visual representations
presented by television and cinema and present on video transmissions undoubt¬
edly create a dimension of mediated experience that is unreachable by the printed
word. However, print media are as much an expression of what tool disembed¬
ding and globalizing trends have done, which is expressed by modernity (Ibid.:
27). Photography—as part of an album collection, private or public, or printed in
journals, in movies, and on television or on a poster, and original version can be
regarded as representing two parallel processes of modernity—disembedding and
globalization.
Fluent Identity and Relatedness: Reality as a Series of Images
The last topic I would like to emphasize is a matter of relatedness—that is, chang¬
ing identity in relation to the Other. I would argue that this subject concerns not
only the discussed caricatures, in which the focus on the othering people is particu¬
larly evident but also other visual images like photographs and films. Identities are
not constant and although they are ascribed specific values, symbols, and attitudes,
they form continuous constructs.
As our main interest is in the depiction of the Other, we pay great attention to
the way in which differences are presented, since indicating a discrepancy between
“us” and “them” is a main way of representing otherness. An overview of the most
common strategies of presenting difference shows that it is usually done in two
ways—with positive auto-presentations and with negative presentations of Others.
The concepts of pointing out difference are present in the book media’s style,
rhetoric, and narratives. They all serve to achieve particular aims. One of the aims
is othering, which is still a way of preserving one’s own identity. Careful analysis
of the various processes of othering by media presented in the volume allows the
reader to grasp differences between various media technologies and their role in
shaping alterity.
Our particular goal was to indicate that the process of othering is a consequence
of a certain relation. It is, on the one hand, a way of establishing relations with
others who can become the Other. Although relations are between people, they are
also seen in visual representations, not only their outcomes, but also the processes
of fixing, negotiating, changing the relations. On the other hand, relations can
be seen between media and particular representations. The world we wanted to
present in this volume belongs to the past, but it left various, complex mutually
related visual representations of the Other. Through those representations, taking
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