In the modern world, the image (photograph or film) is becoming a more powerful way of communicating than the written word. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

It has been suggested that in the twenty-first

century

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,century

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images

have become more powerful than written words. In my perspective, it is probably true that they are more powerful, but

this

is not necessarily a recent change.

To begin

with, it should be quite obvious that

images

are more powerful than written words because they are easier to understand. For a few centuries, people in the Western world were largely reliant upon written accounts of news or adventures in books and newspapers.

However

, with the advent of photography, it became possible for vivid and realistic

images

to be widely disseminated.

After

this

came the video. Many of the great social changes that occurred in

this

part of the world in the

last

century were

due to

the impact of photographs and videos.

For example

, American public opinion against the Vietnam War was hugely impacted by depictions in the media that showed the raw human suffering that went on there, and

this

has been true of subsequent military actions and situations like natural disasters, where the written word seldom captures the pain and suffering of average people in the same way that a visual image could.

However

, the question of whether

this

is a recent and ongoing change is unclear. Certainly, throughout history, people have relied upon visual aids because they simply could not read. Only in very recent times has literacy become the norm throughout most of the world, and so the written word held almost no value for the majority of humans.

While

photos and video are modern inventions, even ancient humans were able to draw pictures of animals on cave walls and understand them, so it seems that the impact of

such

images

is not a new phenomenon. In conclusion, it is true that

images

probably have a greater impact than the written word and that they are likely becoming very important, but whether

this

is a new situation or not is less clear.