Visual Social Media Lab report highlighted in Altimeter's Top Digital Trends for 2016

The Iconic Image on Social Media: A Rapid Research Response to the Death of Aylan Kurdi* by the Visual Social Media Lab, @VisSocMedLab, based in the iSchool and directed by Dr Farida Vis, has been quoted in Altimeter's Top Digital Trends for 2016.  Altimeter highlights how the image of Alan Kurdi (originally misidentified as Aylan), a Syrian child of Kurdish origin, reached 20 million screens around the world and conveyed the impact of the refugee crisis in a way that words could never do. The Altimeter report also predicts this emerging 'discipline of interpreting and responding to the visual web' as a key trend for 2016.

The Iconic Image on Social Media report has received international media coverage since it's publication in December 2015, including on BBC Radio 5, Buzzfeed, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, Quartz, The Next Web, Corriere della Sera, Yorkshire Post. More information about report can be found here, and a full copy here.