Visual Power in Action: Digital Images and the Shaping of Medical Practices

The increasing presence of images in medicine is mostly understood as a visualization of medicine. In this view, physicians and researchers are strongly guided by the visual power of images. Ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with physicians and scientists working in radiology departments and magnetic resonance imaging units however, show that visual power is not always effective. Depending on a situation, physicians and scientists are guided more strongly either by the persuasiveness of an image's visual qualities or its scientific and sociomaterial qualities. Actors trust in images and perceive them as attractive and objective in certain situations, whereas in others they classify images as manipulated representations that are untrustworthy. It is either the visual power or the status of images as scientific and sociomaterial facts that shapes physicians' and researchers' actions. Depending on whether an image is used, for example, to make a diagnosis, to validate a research finding, to communicate with a patient, to prevent litigation, or to improve one's position in the professional field, it is either the visual power or the scientific and sociomaterial characteristics of an image that are more effective in shaping medical practices. Fieldwork and interviews with physicians and scientists show in which situations visual power is relevant (or not) for medical practices. Keywords: Medical imagesvisual powerpractical beliefpractical objectivitypractical utility Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Les Levidow and Kean Birch as well as the three anonymous reviewers for very helpful suggestions and comments, and Cheryl Adam for copy-editing the manuscript. Research for this article was funded by Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).