Abstract
The prevalence and impact of social media are indisputable in many respects but have social media surpassed all other media to become the predominant tool for the en masse public expression of political ideology, identity, and citizenship? Catherine Buoko utilises, and critiques, the relevance of existing theories to unpack how social media are used to communicate the political opinions of disaggregated individuals in a ‘personal, creative, and affective’ (p. 4) information environment. Just as social media have informed the political perspectives of individual users, social media themselves are changing the very concepts of citizenship, identity, and political expression. Visual Citizenship is structured from the ground-up where chapters 1 through 5 provide the necessary contexts and definitions for the remainder of the book; chapters 6 through 10 examine the applicability of traditional content analysis theories for social media studies before Buoko makes methodological recommendations for effective study design; and, chapters 11 through 13 put those principles into practice with Brexit discourses on Flickr and Twitter used as case studies. Buoko highlights that the constant wellspring of user-made visual media communication has pitfalls for the quality of information accessed by users and also the ability of researchers to contextualise the significance of social media on political discourse without careful study configuration. Bouko’s work will be of interest to those intrigued by social media and political expression and should be considered required reading for anyone intending to undertake a study on the topic.