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.

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.

Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series has been granted the EastAsiaNet 2014 Award! In Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series, Florian Schneider analyses political discourses in Chinese TV dramas, the most popular entertainment format in China today. Schneider shows that despite their often nationalistic stories of glorious emperors and courageous officials, such programmes should not be mistaken for official propaganda. Instead, the highly didactical messages of such series are the outcome of complex cultural governance practices, which are influenced by diffuse political interests, commercial considerations, viewing habits, and ideological assumptions. Schneider argues that these interlinking factors lead to a highly restrictive creative environment and to conservative entertainment content that ultimately risks creating precisely the kind of passive masses that Chinese media workers and government officials are trying so hard to emancipate.

Visual Communication: Understanding Images in Media and Culture provides a theoretical and empirical toolkit to examine implications of mediated images. It explores a range of approaches to visual analysis, while also providing a hands-on guide to applying methods to students′ own work. The book: Illustrates a range of perspectives, from content analysis and semiotics, to multimodal and critical discourse analysis Explores the centrality of images to issues of identity and representation, politics and activism, and commodities and consumption Brings theory to life with a host of original case studies, from celebrity videos on Youtube and civil unrest on Twitter, to the lifestyle branding of Vice Media and Getty Images Shows students how to combine approaches and methods to best suit their own research questions and projects An invaluable guide to analysing contemporary media images, this is essential reading for students and researchers of visual communication and visual culture.

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.

Teaches visual literacy, theory, scholarly critique, and practical application of visuals in professional communication careers Visual Communication: Insights and Strategies explores visual imagery in advertising, news coverage, political discourse, popular culture, and digital and social media technologies. It is filled with insights into the role of visuals in our dynamic social environment and contains strategies on how to use them. The authors provide an overview of theoretically-informed literacy and critical analysis of visual communication and demonstrate the ways in which we can assess and apply this knowledge in the fields of advertising, public relations, journalism, organizational communication, and intercultural communication. This important book: Reveals how to analyze visual imagery Introduces a 3-step process, Research-Evaluate-Create, to apply the knowledge gained Combines research, theory, and professional practice of visual communication Designed for undergraduate and graduate courses in visual communication as well as visual rhetoric, visual literacy, and visual culture, Visual Communication: Insights and Strategies reveals how to apply rhetorical theories to visual imagery.

Traditionally, images have played an important role in politics and policy making, mostly in relation to propaganda and public communication. However, contemporary society is inundated with visual material due to the increasing ubiquity of media and visual technologies that facilitate the production, distribution and consumption of images in new and innovative ways. As such, a visual culture has emerged, and a number of authors have written on visual culture and the technologies which underlie it. However, a clear link to policy making is still lacking. This books links the emergence of this visual culture to policy making and explores how visual culture (and the growing number of technologies used to create and distribute images) influence the course, content and outcome of public policy making. It examines how visual culture and policy making in contemporary society are intertwined, elaborating concepts such as power, framing and storytelling. It then links this to technology, and the way this can enhance power, transparency, registration, surveillance and communication. Dealing with the entire cycle of public policy making, from agenda-setting, to policy design, decision making to evaluation, the book contains diverse international case studies including water management, risk management, live-stock diseases, minority integration, racism, freedom of speech, healthcare, disaster evaluation and terrorism.