Research Handbook on Visual Politics

‘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. The edited volume offers both theoretically and methodologically valuable insights into the area of visual politics. The editors carefully built up the structure of 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.’
– Xénia Farkas, The International Journal of Press/Politics

‘The Research Handbook on Visual Politics will make us think hard about the terrain of visual political communication. A marvelous review of the study of visual politics, this book will arouse interest and expose the foundation for understanding images from days of portraiture to the current age of Instagram and TikTok.’
– Shahira S. Fahmy, American University in Cairo and Associate Editor of the flagship Journal of Communication (JoC)

‘Gathering scholars from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds, Darren Lilleker and Anastasia Veneti’s new Research Handbook on Visual Politics offers timely insights by exploring how visuality plays a central role across numerous pressing political phenomena, from social movements to war and from election campaigns to pandemic policies.’
– Roland Bleiker, author of Visual Global Politics, University of Queensland, Australia

‘How were historical monarchs artistically portrayed to legitimate power? What are the benefits and challenges in using eye-tracking technology to study recipients’ perception of political visuals? How are journalistic war images used to support political perspectives and powers? These questions, and many more, are answered in this edited volume where scholars from different fields, with different theoretical and methodological perspectives shed light on how images are used in politics. Since we all live in a visual culture, this is a must read for anyone interested in contemporary political communication.’
– Bengt Johansson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Contributors: Jared Ahmad, Alexandra P. Alberda, Roberta Bracciale, Vincent Campbell, Viktor Chagas, Luciano Cheles, Christ''l De Landtsheer, Philippe De Vries, Stéphanie De Munter, Daniela V. Dimitrova, Vitoria Faccin-Herman, Muhammad Noor Fakhruzzaman, Anna Feigenbaum, Olu Jenzen, César Jiménez-Martínez, Bernadine Jones, Panos Koliastasis, Christina Koulouri, Mireille Lalancette, Tessa Lewin, Darren Lilleker, Yingdan Lu, Brendan Maartens, Ellie Macdonald, Jenni Mäenpää, Franziska Marquart, Antonio Martella, Marco Mazzoni, Chris Miles, Roberto Mincigrucci, Mehnaaz Momen, Katy Parry, Yilang Peng, Stamatis Poulakidakos, Vincent Raynauld, Paul Reilly, Lulu Rodriguez, Lidia Salvatori, Maja Šimunjak, Dennis Steffan, Matteo Stocchetti, Gabriel B. Tait, Anastasia Veneti, Rocío Zamora-Medina

Contents:

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Visual Politics xvii
Darren Lilleker and Anastasia Veneti

PART I THEORIES AND METHODS
1 Visual rhetoric and the analysis of persuasive political communication 2
Chris Miles
2 Visualizing values: cultural dimensions in the visual framing of
COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in Brazil, Indonesia, and the U.S. 14
Lulu Rodriguez, Daniela V. Dimitrova, Muhammad Noor Fakhruzzaman and
Vitoria Faccin-Herman
3 Eye-tracking methodology in research on visual politics 29
Franziska Marquart
4 Computational visual analysis in political communication 41
Yilang Peng and Yingdan Lu
5 Politics of (comics) representation: visualising embodied research and data 54
Alexandra P. Alberda and Anna Feigenbaum

PART II DEPICTIONS OF POWER
6 Visual narratives and the legitimation of power: foreign monarchs
versus national elites in nineteenth-century Greece 69
Christina Koulouri
7 Islamic State, strategic self-othering and the weaponisation of
propaganda images 81
Jared Ahmad
8 Imaged communities: the visual construction, contestation and
commercialisation of the nation 94
César Jiménez-Martínez
9 The visual representation of politicians 108
Dennis Steffan
10 The faces of leadership: picturing power in democratic countries and
dictatorial regimes 122
Luciano Cheles
11 Artivism as transformative practice: the case of Non Una Di Meno 137
Lidia Salvatori

PART III DEPICTIONS OF AUTHENTICITY
12 Me, myself and I: selfies as vehicles of personalised politics in the
social media era 152
Maja Šimunjak
13 Social media, visuals, and politics: a look at politicians’ digital visual
habitus on Instagram 166
Vincent Raynauld and Mireille Lalancette
14 Authenticity and anachronistic media forms: visual presentations of
politicians in party-political broadcasting 180
Vincent Campbell
15 Leaders’ visual communication styles: between personalisation and populism 193
Roberta Bracciale and Antonio Martella
16 When visual communication fosters leaders’ exceptional and ordinary
image: the Salvini case 214
Marco Mazzoni and Roberto Mincigrucci
17 Politainment as dance: visual storytelling on TikTok among Spanish
political parties 227
Rocío Zamora-Medina
18 Judging a book by its cover: political impression management on
Instagram: privatization and voter engagement 243
Stéphanie De Munter, Philippe De Vries and Christ’l De Landtsheer

PART IV DEPICTIONS OF IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES
19 Peripheral cues and the power of simple images 258
Darren Lilleker and Panos Koliastasis
20 Understanding the meanings of visuals: the motivations and values of
Black Lives Matter and social justice art activists 267
Gabriel B. Tait
21 LGBTQ+ visual activism 283
Tessa Lewin and Olu Jenzen
22 Memes as vernacular politics 297
Viktor Chagas
23 Political engagement and satire: a change in the conversation 309
Mehnaaz Momen
24 ‘What’s Your Warrior?’ Selling service in the United States Army using
social media, superheroes, and computer games 321
Brendan Maartens

PART V DEPICTING REALITY
25 Indeterminacy, performativity and the ‘dialectics of the real’: the
problem of knowledge in the analysis of visual politics 335
Matteo Stocchetti
26 The political work of war and conflict images 345
Katy Parry
27 The political symbolism of flags in revolutionary movements: the case
of the 1821 Greek War of Independence 359
Anastasia Veneti and Stamatis Poulakidakos
28 Look into my lies: the strategic use of photography in UK Gov’s 2021
coronavirus campaign 371
Bernadine Jones and Ellie Macdonald
29 Photojournalists as NGO advocates: balancing between two realities 382
Jenni Mäenpää
30 Watching the watchers: sousveillance as a political response to
surveillance society 396
Paul Reilly

Index