Analyzing populist content IV. – visual materials
Radicalization of politics in Central and Eastern Europe


Outline
1.Visual materials as a source of political content
•2. Populism in visual materials – examples

Visual materials as a political content
•Basic assumption on the importance of visual materials – affecting our attitudes, values and also
perception of politics
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•What are visual materials: pictures, movies, sculptures (anything you can see)
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•Different ways of analysis (similar to text analysis) – both qualitative and quantitative
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Quantitative approach
•Similar to other quantitative analysis – theoretical assumptions, ideally formulation of
theoretically driven hypotheses (BUT explorative approach possible as well)
•Definition of variables of interest (objects /leader, other members of the leadership, ohther
parties/, environment /e.g. mingling with the people/, clothing, policy areas, types of pictures
/e.g. Selfies/)
•Usually comparative hypotheses (are populist visual materials more people-centric than materials
of other political parties?) – otherwise how would you know that something is more or less?
•Possible questions:
•In which cirmustances are leaders of populist parties presented?
•How are other political parties presented in visual materials of different political actors?
•Challenge (not much has been done so far): How to measure populism in visual communication?

Types of questions (Bell)
•Try to think of these types of questions in relation to populism


Data in quantitative analysis
•Similar principles as in textual analysis
•Definition of the corpus (data) – which pictures/movies should I analyze?
•Driven by research questions
•Possibilities – election period, representative sample, related to a specific topic, different
time periods, etc.
• units of analysis – pictures, frames, parts of pictures such as politicians, environement,
tonality… (dependent on the question)
•Values – the same as the text analysis (remember: mutually exklusive and ideally exhaustive
categories – see Krippendorf)
•Interpretation – prevalent characteristic, comparison…
•Reliability – not that so much of our concern in the course but values should be defined as
clearly as possible
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Qualitative approach
•Deeper understanding of the content
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•Visual materials are not translated into numbers or quantifiable categories
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•Interpretation, effort to find a context for interpretation
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•Meaning instead of numbers
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Example I: Doerr
•Qualitative approach
•„visual posters and symbols constructed and circulated transnationally by various political actors
to mobilize contentious politics on the issues of immigration and citizenship“
•Transnational spillover
•Comparison of ideologically different political actors
•„how did the SVP and EuroMayday campaigns portray the relationship between immigrants and citizens
in order to reach out and mobilize supporters in distinct national contexts and transnationally?“
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Data, method and results
•SVP, NPD and LN
•analysis of the black sheep campaign, my sample includes relevant visuals found on web pages and
blogs by the groups associated with the cases studied (98 visuals, blacksheep related)
•Discoursive analysis, visual iconography, contextualization (you do need to follow the method in
details, instead concentrate on the qualitative nature of the analysis)
•Comparison of the ways of transnational spillover and adaptation of communication related to
immigration
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Example II: Wodak, Forchtner
•Analysis of a specific visual materials – Sagas from Vienna
•Qualitative approach – discourse-historical approach
•„calculated ambivalence“ – blurring the line between fiction and reality
•Politics of memory
•Contextual analysis of discoursive practices
•What is important here is the conceptual and analytical background suited to the research
questions – remember: research design follows your questions
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Conclusion
•Visual materials also important for understanding politics
•Possible of their analysis
•Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches
•Very flexible – depending on the research questions
•Data source – images from social networks, party materials, party manifestoes, newspapers…