Journal of Visual Political Communication - Current Issue
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2024
- Editorial
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Editorial
Authors: Darren Lilleker, Orla Vigsö, Bengt Johansson and Anastasia VenetiThe editorial places our studies into a wider context linking together the different studies which cover election campaigning protest and the Covid-19 crisis. The works focus firstly on the crisis communication strategies of Nordic political leaders and secondly on the UK government’s social media messaging. Both these also offer insights into the tools of social media, multimodal and social semiotic analysis. Moving away from the pandemic we also offer insights into the work of photojournalists and their framing of Zimbabwean election contenders. Finally, for those interested in how facial expressions betray emotions, and how expressions can be read, the final article offers significant methodological insights on the use of Facial Action Coding System tools. Rounding off with a review of a recent handbook in the field, the editorial introduces this issue as one born out of and launched into a long hot political summer.
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- Articles
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Visualizing crisis leadership: Prime ministers on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Tom Carlson, Jenny Lindholm and Sören AnderssonThis study sheds light on how political leaders engage in visual meaning-making on social media during a major crisis. In addition, it explores which kinds of visual messages by political leaders on social media drive high popular engagement in times of crisis. The study employs content analysis, including automatic facial expression analysis, to investigate visual communication on the Instagram accounts of three Nordic prime ministers (PMs) during the critical initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis covers visual personalization, depicted individuals, national symbols and facial expressions. Furthermore, the study explores the visual elements within the posts that garnered the highest public engagement, as measured by the number of likes and comments. The findings indicate that the PMs primarily projected an image of professional, capable and credible crisis leadership through their visual content. However, the potential for leaders to convey compassion, empathy and authenticity through visual imagery is also evident, particularly exemplified by the Danish PM. The visual content that generated the most significant public engagement predominantly consisted of videos featuring the PMs in formal professional settings, directly addressing the audience about serious matters.
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The shitposting scattergun approach: A multimodal analysis of the first wave COVID-19 social media messaging from UKGov
More LessThis article analyses the type and style of the UK government social media messaging during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic using multimodal and social semiotic analysis. Images improve health communication by increasing comprehension of information, enhancing recall of instructions, encouraging positive self-protective attitudes and behaviour and are beneficial to those with low health literacy skills. When done well, visual material can meaningfully improve health outcomes. UKGov’s social media during COVID-19 reveals that production of mental noise and feed flooding can affect perceptions of risk. Recognizing the impact that both visuals and social media campaigns can have in crisis communication, this article first explores the steps in creating the social communication and then analyses social media posts during the first four months of the pandemic from UKGov Facebook and Instagram accounts. This article employs a multimodal social semiotic methodology to organize, code and make sense of the often contradictory and ambiguous meanings contained in a vast trove of visual data. Ultimately, this article argues that the UKGov’s ‘scattergun’ approach to the first wave COVID-19 infographics enhanced polysemic meanings and flooded social media feeds with ‘shitposting’ philosophy, which decreased clarity of understanding and potentially impacted health literacy amongst the UK populous.
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‘Behold, it’s new’: Photojournalism and political communication in Zimbabwe
More LessVisuals hold a special place in the field of communication. Politicians, in a move to position themselves or market their activities, use visuals that stand as a testimony to their principles. However, their importance and value in political communication are not highly reflected in academic literature. This article is built from this understudied field by looking at the role photojournalists play in framing opposition political parties in Zimbabwe. Photographs are important tools in politics as evidenced by experimental research on political communication that found that ‘a single photograph can have a clear impact on voters’ judgements regarding a candidate’s demeanour, competence, leadership ability, attractiveness, likeableness, and integrity’. This study seeks to analyse photographs that were used by photojournalists to frame the newly formed political party, amidst the power struggles within the party, and political repression from the authoritarian regime. Informed by visual framing, the study found that photojournalists framed Nelson Chamisa as youthful and vibrant while his party was seen as resembling the new dawn. However, photographs also showed that Chamisa and his party had nothing to offer as they did not have a constitution, guiding policy nor a clear ideology.
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‘Keeping their shift together’: An exploratory visual analysis of a Brazilian crowd crime
More LessThis study employs the identity shift theory to qualitatively analyse videos produced and published on social media by the invaders of the Brasilia governmental buildings on 8 January 2023. These videos were captured and shared by a Brazilian fact-checking agency (Lupa). Brazilian law classifies multitudinous crime, or crowd crime, as any crime committed by a group of people in a tumultuous situation, in which there is an identity shift from the self to the crowd. Employing nonverbal communication (NVC), including Ekman’s facial action coding system (FACS), the analysis of the videos identified ten large codes associated with emotions, which correspond to the stages of the attack. Results show that the crowd exhibited an identity shift through homogenous NVC from the beginning to the end of the process.
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- Book Review
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Research Handbook on Visual Politics, Darren Lilleker and Anastasia Veneti (eds) (2023)
By Erik P. BucyReview of: Research Handbook on Visual Politics, Darren Lilleker and Anastasia Veneti (eds) (2023)
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 448 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-80037-692-2, h/bk, £200.00, e-book, £48.00
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