Can you tell if a news outlet, an NGO or a government is
picturing a person, an event or an issue fairly? It can be very
hard to assess visual “balance” when photos are scattered across
a website, and appear sporadically over a span of time. There
may be an anecdotal impression that there is bias, but visual
bias has been very difficult to document. The social media site
Pinterest is now making documentation possible. Have you heard
of Pinterest? According to the site itself, it’s “a Virtual
Pinboard” that lets users “organize and share all the beautiful
things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their
weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite
recipes.” Doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of site that would
help journalists or academics, governments or NGOs, does it? But
Pinterest is turning out to be a stealth tool for researchers.