Being analytical: words are more "abstract" than images. An image contains more "concrete" cues. "tiger" covers a range of beasts, and hints at many related ones, whereas a picture tends to show a particular tiger. Even when words are woven together to describe a specific scene, alternate possible scenes aren't far away. Consider looking at an image of a large tiger, crouched, ready to spring at a small child. Is the child Asian? European? Well, its probably African, since its a tiger. But the fear would be universal. A graphic can be a powerful way to convey a fearful image. But it could also subtly distract - in some corner of my mind: "at least it isn't 'me/someone who looks like me/someone who looks like people I am close to' who is threatened" Still, I think the tiger picture could scare me more easily than tiger words, as the words are easier to turn away from / gloss over. And that might lead me to relate more to the humanity of the threatened child. Like pictures of the wounded in a war - who cares what ethnicity they are? Puts a brake on the thinking of "Only so many [insert your nationality] were killed." - - - - - But back to disadvantages of an image being so concrete. I think of images of Jesus when I was growing up, here in the States. In hindsight, the ethnicity of those images was ludicrous. I can see why the churches used images like this - they would hate to have the Christian Saviour be one of "them" instead of one of "us" ;-D But that distortion almost certainly made it easier for discrimination to continue. Living in the Middle Eastern climate, in an agrarian society two thousand years ago, how dark would Jesus of Nazareth' skin have been?!