Abstract
Although visual tools are as strongly embedded in political communication as verbal ones, for a long period, visuals in politics remained “one of the least studied and least understood areas” (Schill 2012: 119). Fortunately, the past decade has brought a change and as Bucy and Joo (2021) observe, “social scientists [have] begun to take visuals seriously” (p. 5). An important moment of this new era was in 2019 when the book Visual Political Communication (Veneti et al. 2019) was published with a unique and comprehensive overview of the research field. Lilleker and Veneti’s (2023) new work, the Research Handbook on Visual Politics is the next milestone in the research of visual political communication with its thirty chapters in five thematic areas.
In the introduction, the editors provide a highly welcome overview of the research field, its intersections with visual studies, and its trajectory — listing the most influential theoretical, and methodological works—mainly predating social media. Lilleker and Veneti briefly discuss the influential works from the era of web 2.0 before defining visual political communication as “a subfield of political communication, focusing on the ways in which imagery is used within the flows of political communication” (p. xxiii). Both the overview and this definition of the area are useful for those turning their attention to visual political communication research.
The first part offers five studies on both the more traditional and newer methods in visual political communication research. After two chapters on visual rhetoric and framing analysis, Marquart adequately summarizes a wide range of relevant literature on eye tracking in visual politics and describes the challenges and opportunities of the method. Next, Peng and Lu’s systematic review on the computational visual analysis in political communication not only provides a guideline and a wide array of literature on the application of supervised and unsupervised machine learning and application programming interfaces (APIs), but how these are connected to relevant visual political communication areas, such as protests, misinformation, and emotions. Finally, Alberda and Feigenbaum’s graphic essay on comics’ methodology adds a unique layer to this book both visually and argumentatively by describing the data visualization opportunities of the method.
The second part of the book is about depictions of power. After Koulouri’s historical overview of the representation of power in portraits, paintings, and early photographs of political actors, Ahmad’s examination of the Islamic state’s propaganda images shows the dangers of strategic visual propaganda. Using Brazil as a case study, Jiménez-Martínez describes the visual depiction and branding of nations, focused on construction, contestation, and commercialization. In the next chapter, Steffan’s content analysis of German chancellor candidates shows different visual self-presentation strategies in terms of framing, personalization, and impression management, all representing visual tools of power. Cheles’ comparison of democratic and illiberal leaders’ visual depictions shows “alarming” similarities, but also differences in their potential impact on the quality of democratic life, which are softened by democratic institutions in multiparty systems. Finally, Salvatori describes a potential visual form of political communication—artivism, the combination of art and activism.
The third part of the book is about visual authenticity, which is often connected to social media-based visual political communication. The main actors in these chapters are the politicians, and the focus is mostly on their self-presentation. Both Šimunjak’s, and Raynauld and Lalancette’s works examine personalization, while Bracciale and Martella broaden this in the direction of populism. In the same line, Mazzoni and Mincigrucci connect visual personalization and populism. Further, as Zamora-Medina’s study shows, authenticity can be contextualized within pop politics and politainment. Additionally, the effects of privatized visuals on citizens are also measured in De Munter and colleagues’ chapter on the political impression management on Instagram.
The fourth section is organized around the visualization of ideologies and ideas. Lilleker and Koliastasis provide convincing arguments on the power of visuals in politics. The chapters here broaden the focus of visual politics in terms of actors and describe the visual communication of the army, activists, social movements, and ordinary people. The topics vary from propaganda to artivism, memes, and cartoons. Further, various types of visuals are examined in the chapters, which underline the power of images in depicting ideas and ideologies in the case of a broad range of actors, topics, and mediums.
The depiction of reality and war constitutes the fifth part of the book. These chapters describe the politics of war images, the meanings of symbols, and the holistic understanding of reality through the social semiotic analysis of flags. Jones and Macdonald focus on multimodal visual analysis techniques that help understand the ethical aspects, efficacy, and visual practices of public health images spread during COVID-19, while Mäenpää’s chapter examines the reality depicted by photojournalists who worked for humanitarian NGOs. Finally, Reilly describes inverse surveillance techniques, such as citizens using body-worn cameras to document the actions of authorities during protests.
In sum, the edited volume offers both theoretically and methodologically valuable insights into the area of visual politics. The editors carefully structured the book to cover a wide variety of topics, actors, periods, mediums, and platforms in the chapters, and to provide a broad basis for visual political communication research. Both the visual-based social media platforms, and the more “traditional” channel of visual politics—that is, television—are addressed, which shows not only continuity but highlights the relevance of moving and still images in political communication through diverse channels. Additionally, traditional actors of political communication—politicians, citizens, and the media—are well represented throughout. Accordingly, this collection of works is a useful tool for scholars in the field of political communication to broaden their knowledge of visual politics.