Visual Politics: Visual Political Communication on Social Media

Abstract

Visuals are integral part of our life, and it is also true for political communication. Political posters and advertisements are not only visible on television, the streets but everywhere on the Internet, especially on social media. It is highly unlikely to go through our Facebook newsfeed without seeing any political visuals, such as photos, videos, or gifs. These visuals have a huge influencing impact, as they are processed quicker than verbal and textual information, sometimes even unconsciously. This is well-known by the political actors as well, and they are using images as part of their strategic toolkit to influence voters. However, political communication research has not reflected on these processes for a long period. Fortunately, this tendency started to change in the past decade, and research on visual political communication, or as Bucy and Joo (2021) calls it, visual politics, gained momentum. The present article-based dissertation aims to contribute to this emerging research area, as due to the relative novelty of the research field, a number of research questions remain to be answered. The thesis provides insights into three related studies that apply visual content analysis. To better understand visual political communication on social media, visual personalization strategies, and their effects on different social media platforms are studied. Further, the similarities and differences between populist and non-populist parties’ visual communication are described. The populist style of an exemplary populist leader is also tested across different periods and modalities. Additionally, portable coding instruments that allow visual, and bimodal investigations related to political communication strategies, personalization, and populism were created and published in order to increase research in the field.