Research Handbook on Visual Politics: (Elgar Handbooks in Political Science)

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. The Handbook provides an introduction to the theoretical underpinning of the study of visual politics as well as an overview of the current thinking and research traditions in the field of visual politics. The impressive selection of contributors explore all types of media, including studies of the tools utilised for visual politics such as social media, art and photography, featuring the latest platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. The editors also include discussions of visual politics covering a range of nations and political systems while placing current practices in visual politics within their historical context. Offering a rich range of studies exploring differing practices within their contexts to highlight current studies and support the development of future research, this Research Handbook is designed for researchers and students interested in the broad field of politics and the subfields of political communication, persuasion, propaganda and rhetoric.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
Edited by Darren Lilleker and Anastasia Veneti, Department of Humanities and Law, Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University, UK

Review :
‘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.’ ‘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.’ ‘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.’ ‘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.’