Research Handbook On Visual Politics

The Research Handbook on Visual Politics focuses on key theories and methodologies for better understanding visual political communication. It also concentrates on the depictions of power within politics, taking a historical and longitudinal approach to the topic of placing visuals within a wider framework of political understanding.

This book offers a theoretically driven, empirically grounded survey of the role visual communication plays in political culture, enabling a better understanding of the significance and impact visuals can have as tools of political communication. The advent of new media technologies have created new ways of producing, disseminating and consuming visual communication, the book hence explores the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of visual political communication in the digital age, and how visual communication is employed in a number of key settings. The book is intended as a specialist reading and teaching resource for courses on media, politics, citizenship, activism, social movements, public policy, and communication.

This timely Research Handbook draws on a wide range of international case studies to assess the transformative impact of modern communication landscapes on political propaganda. From Brexit to Donald Trump, from presidential elections in Mexico to political rallies in India, from 'fake news' to Cambridge Analytica, contributors demonstrate the ways in which growing digital platforms have amplified the reach and influence of political propaganda. International contributors dissect current political contexts, with a key focus on the growth of populism, nationalism and alt-right politics, to understand how propaganda contributes to the formation and organization of political cultures. Chapters pay close attention to recent election campaigns across Europe, Asia and the Americas and analyse political and cultural information wars that have been fuelled by misinformation and the so-called 'fake news' in digital media. Bringing together pioneering empirical research into contemporary communication, campaigning, journalism and new media in a new political age, this Research Handbook provides a critical understanding of how propaganda contributes to the modern exercise of power globally. Offering interdisciplinary perspectives on an issue at the forefront of contemporary politics, this Research Handbook is a crucial resource for both scholars and students of international politics and relations, security, communications and media studies. Its practical insights into political campaigning and new media will also benefit policymakers, governments and citizens in handling key challenges posed to the healthy functioning of political systems by propaganda.

At a time when political representation can be said to be facing its ultimate crisis, this crucial work clarifies the terms of the debate, providing an up-to date analysis of the main conceptual and institutional controversies that have arisen surrounding this topic. Written by leading scholars in the field, contributions focus on how representation is conceptualised and its relation to democracy.

We live in a visual age. Images and visual artefacts shape international events and our understanding of them. Photographs, film and television influence how we view and approach phenomena as diverse as war, diplomacy, financial crises and election campaigns. Other visual fields, from art and cartoons to maps, monuments and videogames, frame how politics is perceived and enacted. Drones, satellites and surveillance cameras watch us around the clock and deliver images that are then put to political use. Add to this that new technologies now allow for a rapid distribution of still and moving images around the world. Digital media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, play an important role across the political spectrum, from terrorist recruitment drives to social justice campaigns. This book offers the first comprehensive engagement with visual global politics. Written by leading experts in numerous scholarly disciplines and presented in accessible and engaging language, Visual Global Politics is a one-stop source for students, scholars and practitioners interested in understanding the crucial and persistent role of images in today’s world.

The role of the visual in politics is gaining momentum in scholarly work concerned with the current social media landscape. It is widely acknowledged that the production, dissemination and consumption of visual products in the Global South is powerfully shaped by geo-politics and a power dynamics in which the Global North dominates the South (the cultural imperialism argument). However, scant attention has been paid to theoretical, methodological, and empirically grounded approaches to visual politics produced by scholars working in the Global South. Little is known about the ways in which scholarship in the Global South might challenge and resist western approaches to the study of the visual. Against this background, this project aims to examine visual politics in the Global South through theoretically driven, and empirically grounded case studies, which focus on the role of the visual in formal politics (e.g., political campaigns, the relation between state and citizens) and public and everyday politics (e.g., social movements, activism, grassroots politics, civil society initiatives). This volume examines visual politics in the Global South through theoretically driven, and empirically grounded case studies, which focus on the role of the visual in formal politics (e.g., political campaigns, the relation between state and citizens) and public and everyday politics. It will be of interest to both researchers and students interested in the study of visual politics from various disciplinary lens (media and communication, anthropology, politics, and sociology).

Bilder sind in der Politik allgegenwärtig. Sie beeinflussen, wie wir Themen und Ereignisse verstehen, PolitikerInnen beurteilen und Wahlentscheidungen treffen. Dennoch ist wenig über den strategischen Einsatz von Bildern in Wahlkämpfen bekannt. Dieser Band untersucht die visuellen Kommunikationsstrategien von Parteien und KandidatInnen aus einer Langzeit- und Vergleichsperspektive. Er analysiert Wahlplakate und Social-Media-Profile und stellt die Relevanz von Bildern in westlichen Demokratien dar. Visual Politics richtet sich an StudentInnen, DoktorandInnen und WissenschaftlerInnen sowie an alle, die sich für die Rolle von Bildern im Wahlkampf interessieren, wie KampagnenmanagerInnen, Parteien, KandidatInnen und JournalistInnen.

This book provides a user-friendly guide to the expanding scope of visual sociology, through a discussion of a broad range of visual material, and reflections on how such material can be studied sociologically. The chapters draw on specific case-study examples that examine the complexity of the hyper-visual social world we live in, exploring three domains of the ‘relational image’: the urban, social media, and the aerial. Zuev and Bratchford tackle issues such as visual politics and surveillance, practices of visual production and visibility, analysing the changing nature of the visual. They review a range of methods which can be used by researchers in the social sciences, utilising new media and their visual interfaces, while also assessing the changing nature of visuality. This concise overview will be of use to students and researchers aiming to adopt visual methods and theories in their own subject areas such as sociology, visual culture and related courses in photography, new-media and visual studies.