Facts of (Financial) life: Political power and re-visualization strategies

Abstract

Digital visualizations have seen an exponential rise in use by politicians, candidates, and other political actors. Digital visualizations are an informative and engaging genre, but when applied by political candidates, they may also be used to persuade or mislead. However, the ways in which different actors utilize them have yet to receive systematic scholarly attention. Informed by a comprehensive theoretical framework related to political power, digital visualizations, and social media campaigns, I perform grounded qualitative content analysis of all cost-of-living visualizations posed to Facebook during the 2015 Israeli election period, by both peripheral and primary political actors. I define two main argumentation strategies (Progress Makers & Hinderers and Re-Visualized Economy) reliant on different narrative, visual, and information-oriented strategies by different actors. An overview of the findings reveals digital visualizations as a meeting ground between the political power of actors, the rhetorical power of emotionality, and the cultural-political power of numbers. I conclude with a reflection on re-visualization as a means of expanding a fourth type of power, discursive power, wherein visualizations are used as a tool for resistance by weaker actors, against the narrative of reality promoted by stronger actors, relying on the rhetorical affordances of the digital political visualization genre to increase their political power. Digital visualizations thus offer a uniquely agile tool for political actors of all types to utilize in gaining discursive power in the competition over election narratives in the digital arena of social media.