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Melanie, It seems to me that there is a dynamic between disjunctiveness and anchoredness. As in multimedia form, they are synthesised into the 'flow' of the form. Specific to news images which are indistinct, murky, fragmentary I feel that the scrolling text is an authenticating device, assuring the viewer of the fidelity of the image (though the low quality image has a textual/haptic intrinsic 'authenticating' affect). However, slippages between image and text seem to relate less to issues of fidelity and more to modern multimedia reading practices, an increasingly multilateral interpretive mode. This seems to me indicative of a greater recognition of personal rather than altruistic information consumption. For example, an image of refugees - a scrolling sports leaguew table. Inevitably, a proportion of viewers will subjectively privelege the sports info. As a change in the vocabulary of television it seems to indicate -the condensation of information, leading to multilateral arrangement of information in a moment of newstime, often leading to a disjunction of information themes which the reader makes intelligible. -the relationship between poor quality images and scrolling/headlining text seems to produce an authentication affect through the combination of dual reading practices. The definitive text helping make sense of a poor/looped/compressed/unintelligible image. Importantly, specific qualities inherent in the roughness of the image lend it an immediacy/textuality which is in itself an authenticating affect. Interestingly, the fall of Saddams 20ft statue today was presented very traditionally, HD digital reportage format. Perhaps the overt sybolic nature of that event, iconic of the fall of the regime, necessitates an image emphasis. The image is not ambiguous, it declares itself symbolically and in its clarity. Is the total affect of a multimedia presentation therefore a legimating, sense-making, authenticating ideological mode rather than the presentation of more information in a smaller amount of time? Cheers, David __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer