Determinants Reading COVID-19 Visual Messages Located in Public Urban Spaces from the Perspective of P.M.Lester's Theory of Visual Communication

 In the face of the multiplication of images in all spheres of human life, it is necessary to discuss the need to develop visual education, the purpose of which is to prepare people to read visual messages in the conditions of a changing culture. For the needs of the research challenge, the source of which was the global crisis caused by the Covid 19 pandemic, the subject of scientific interest was defined, which are the conditions for reading covid 19 visual messages located in public urban spaces. The article presents a fragment of a wider research. Due to the carrier of the visual message used, the analysis was based on photos presenting Covid 19 visual messages, obtained from cities in New Zealand, China and Kenya. It has been adopted that the critical theory and visual culture focused on the message can mutually support each other with the traditions of their discourses in the descriptions of the analyzed phenomena. For the purposes of the research, the theory of visual communication by P.M. Lester was adopted, taking into account six perspectives of knowledge: 1) historical, 2) personal, 3) ethical, 4) cultural, 5) technical and 6) critical.