This article examines the role that an emergent “object of journalism”, generic visuals, plays in professional journalistic practice. Generic visuals such as stock photos and simple data visualizations have standardized formats and appearances, perform particular design functions and circulate with increasing frequency in the news media. Because they are produced, distributed and consumed regularly and at speed in today’s news texts, it is important to investigate whether and how they are shaping and reshaping the profession of journalism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted at three UK news organizations, we argue that journalists reinforce their own professional authority by imbuing generic visuals with particular news values, drawing on 21st century notions of the journalist-audience relationship to justify the use of generic visuals, and routinizing and standardizing their use. Through our analysis of this ubiquitous but overlooked visual form, we advance understanding of what constitutes professionalism within journalism.
AielloGKennedyHAndersonCW, et al. (2022) Generic visuals’ of Covid-19 in the news: invoking banal belonging through symbolic reiteration. International Journal of Cultural Studies25(3-4): 309–330.
2.
AielloGThurlowCPortmannL (2023) Desocializing social media: the visual and media ideologies of stock photography. Social Media + Society9(1): 1–14.
3.
AlexanderJC (2008) Iconic consciousness: the material feeling of meaning. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space26(5): 782–794.
4.
AllanSPetersC (2020) The visual citizen in a digital news landscape. Communication Theory30(2): 149–168.
5.
AndersonC (2018) Apostles of Certainty: Data Journalism and the Politics of Doubt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6.
BarnhurstKGNeroneJ (2002) The Form of News: A History. New York City: Guilford Press.
7.
Belair-GagnonVSteinkeAJ (2020) Capturing digital news innovation research in organizations, 1990–2018. Journalism Studies21(12): 1724–1743.
8.
BockMA (2017) Visual media effects: photography. In: RoesslerP (ed) International Encyclopedia of Media Effects. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley- Blackwell.
9.
BoczkowskiP (2004a) Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.
BraunVClarkeV (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology3(2): 77–101.
11.
BroussardMDiakopoulosNGuzmanAL, et al. (2019) Artificial intelligence and journalism. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly96(3): 673–695.
12.
CapleHBednarekM (2016) Rethinking news values: what a discursive approach can tell us about the construction of news discourse and news photography. Journalism17(4): 435–455.
13.
ChristinA (2020) Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms. 1st edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
14.
ConyersSP (2024) Risky business: how metrics obfuscate journalistic values with traffic volumes in digital news production. Journalism26(6): 1216–1232.
15.
DeuzeMWitschgeT (2018) Beyond journalism: theorizing the transformation of journalism. Journalism19(2): 165–181.
16.
DowlingDVoganT (2015) Can we “snowfall” this?Digital Journalism3(2): 209–224.
17.
Du GayPHallSJanesL, et al. (1997) Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage.
18.
FroshP (2003) The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography and the Visual Content Industry. Oxford: Berg.
19.
FroshP (2020) Is commercial photography a public evil? Beyond the critique of stock photography. In: MilesMWelchED (eds) Photography and its Publics. London: Bloomsbury, 187–206.
20.
GansHJ (1979) Deciding What’s News. Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press.
21.
GürselZD (2016) Image Brokers: Visualizing World News in the Age of Digital Circulation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
22.
HarimanRLucaitesJL (2018) Predicting the present: iconic photographs and public culture in the digital media environment. Journalism & Communication Monographs20(4): 318–324.
23.
HoltKKarlssonM (2015) “Random acts of journalism?”: how citizen journalists tell the news in Sweden. New Media & Society17(11): 1795–1810.
24.
IlanJ (2018) The International Photojournalism Industry: Cultural Production and the Making and Selling of News Pictures. New York, NY: Routledge.
25.
KennedyHAielloGAnnabellT, et al. (2025) Generic visuals in the news as public images: activating emotions, experiences and identities. European Journal of Cultural StudiesOnlineFirst: 1–25.
McCoskerAWilkenR (2014) Rethinking ‘big data’ as visual knowledge: the sublime and the diagrammatic in data visualisation. Visual Studies29(2): 155–164.
28.
RussellALVinselL (2018) After innovation, turn to maintenance. Technology and Culture59(1): 1–25.
29.
SonnevendJ (2016) Stories without Borders: The Berlin Wall and the Making of a Global Iconic Event. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
ThomsonTJ (2024) Picturing a quality local news visual: perspectives from non-specialist journalists. Journalism26(6): 1163–1180.
32.
ThomsonTJThomasRJ (2023) Generative visual AI in newsrooms. Considerations related to production, presentation, and audience interpretation and impact. Journal of Research6(3-4): 318–328.
33.
ThurlowCAielloGPortmannL (2020) Visualizing teens and technology: a social semiotic analysis of stock photography and news media imagery. New Media & Society22(3): 528–549.
34.
TucherA (2017) “I believe in faking”: the Dilemma of photographic realism at the dawn of photojournalism. Photography and Culture10(3): 195–214.
35.
WajcmanDMacKenzieJ (1999) The Social Shaping of Technology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
36.
ZelizerB (2010) About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
