Next, let's look do something similar to practice critical thinking about images. The images below are the same ones we saw on the previous page showing a liberal/blue feed post on the left and a conservative/red feed one on the right, both about immigration.

First, let's think about image choice. When writers or journalists look for images to accompany a piece of writing, they don't just pick the first image they find. They choose their images carefully. Like language, details in images can also influence emotional responses, and they often do this in very subtle ways, so the viewer may not even realize why they feel that emotion.
Now, let's look at the sample Facebook posts from Blue Feed, Red Feed again to see how the images are intended to influence the readers.

Image of immigrant father and daughter drowned trying to enter the U.S.

Left side = Liberal/Blue Feed

First, we should begin with some context. The image is of a man holding a young girl who's wearing pink with a pink flower in her hair. The man is smiling slightly and the girl is very happy. Both are looking at the camera. This image was found on the Blue Feed, Red Feed page on June 26, 2019, three days after this man and his daughter drowned while trying to cross a river from Mexico into the United States. Their names are Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez (25 years old) and his daughter Valeria (almost 2 years old). They were from El Salvador, which has had a lot of gang warfare and violence for more than a decade. This Blue Feed image is from the Facebook post made by Bernie Sanders, and it includes a link to an article from The Washington Post newspaper about the drowned father and daughter.

Although there were many images on the news and web around that time that showed the father and daughter lying face down in the river, Sanders chose to use this image of a happy, smiling father and daughter.
- This is meant to appeal to the readers' feeling about family, specifically fathers and their daughters.
- People feel that fathers should always protect their daughters, so seeing this happy family image while knowing how they died (with him trying to rescue her from the river when she was swept away), directly appeals to the readers' emotions.
- If the reader has already seen the images of the drowned father and daughter in the river, this image of the happy pair will likely affect them even more.
The color pink is associated with little girls and princesses, and makes us think of innocence and femininity (being female).
This image may be intended to make the reader's heart hurt, to make us feel sympathy for all immigrants and what they're enduring.

Right side = Conservative/Red Feed

Let's get some context for this image as well. There are actually two images in this conservative/red feed post: the one on the left shows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at a podium. It appears to be from the winter because she's dressed in a black winter coat. black scarf, and black gloves. Her hair is pulled back. She's in the middle of speaking so her mouth is wide open and she's not smiling. She looks angry or determined, and her left hand is raised with the index finger pointed. On the right, there's an image of some people sitting against a wall in the dark with one person walking toward them. We can see them because there's a truck behind them with its headlights on, shining on them. The truck's driver side door is open, and it appears to be an official truck because it has lights on the roof of the truck's cab. The sense is that this is an image of immigrants. As with the liberal/blue feed post, below the image there's a link to an article - the one from The Conservative Tribune.

The image on the left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was likely chosen to accompany the article in this post because of the symbolism in it, which many people would subconsciously pick up on.
- Ocasio-Cortez looks severe because her hair is pulled back, she's wearing all black clothes, and she has a scarf all the way up to her chin.
- Black is traditionally the color of the bad guys in westerns and other genres.
- Because her mouth is wide open, she looks like she's yelling and angry. Women who show anger or speak loudly are often thought to be too aggressive or not ladylike enough, and their ideas are often dismissed because of this.
- Having her hand raised with a pointed index finger is suggestive of the way dictators often speak to their audiences. It could be seen as controlling or domineering, and in some cultures this type of pointing is considered rude or disrespectful.
The image on the right may have been chosen to show who is in charge.
- The truck with the bright headlights is in the center of the image and the people can only be seen in silhouette (in the shadows). We cannot see their faces, so we don't feel such a personal connection with them. Compare this image with the one of Martínez Ramírez and his daughter.
- Several people who we're assuming are immigrants are sitting against a wall off to the side. Sitting is a submissive position, and they are also not positioned in the center, so they are less important than the shining truck.