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Clever°Franke www.cleverfranke.com

Color analysis news images

By 31-10-2022

Analysis of 553,527 news images shows how news colors our view of the world

Analysis of half a million news images shows how news colors our worldview. The research shows that Nu.nl and Nos.nl depict our world with similar colors as international general news sources. What does set these two Dutch news sites apart is that they use darker colors more often. For the study, images from more than 13,000 online news sources worldwide were analyzed over a period of one year.

Weekends more colorful
News worldwide is colorful, yet it still consists mostly of neutral colors (59.7%). Interestingly, news on weekends is more colorful (more than 25%) than during the week. On lunar and Wednesday days we see the least amount of use of color in news images. 

International counterparts
Looking at 50 English-language news sources worldwide, we see that Fox Sports, Business Wire and CNet use the brightest colors, while the color intensity of Daily Sabah, CBC and The Times is the lowest. Design news uses more bright colors, especially in color groups not often used in general news, such as bright pink, orange orange and violet. Dutch general news websites Nu.nl and NOS.nl present general news in more bland colors and they use more dark colors compared to international counterparts.

Blue dominant
The color blue dominates the news landscape. It is used for all topics and is favored by specialized news sites in all categories. This does not mean that our view of the world is dominated exclusively by cold colors. Orange and brown tones are also widely used across all sources and topics.

Gert Franke, co-founder of Clever°Franke: “We started this research to gain insight into how we perceive the world around us. News is a daily means by which we form an image of the world around us, near and far. We wanted to investigate, how online news articles ‘color’ our view of the world, this color research gives a global insight into this.”

The study >

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