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- Volume 4, Issue 1, 2017
Poster, The - Volume 4, Issue 1-2, 2017
Volume 4, Issue 1-2, 2017
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A political history of visual display
More LessAbstractVisual presentations of political leaders have a long tradition. They convey information about who a politician is and – to a certain degree – his or her political positions. As studiously crafted displays of ideals, such images may also enlarge, challenge, complete or be a substitute for qualities and values. These capacities make images effective tools of political persuasion. While not aiming at a comprehensive overview, this article tries to capture the visual mode of political communication by studying how the portrayal of politicians provides the public with knowledge about the world of politics during different information eras. The main question is how the development of new forms of media, each with individual possibilities and restrictions regarding display, access, reach and storage, facilitate specific forms of visual politics. Examples from each historical era are discussed. Central questions include what images are displayed, how are they displayed and with what media technology. Also examined are rhetorical functions, the images’ institutional anchorage and forms of interaction. Visual presentations of politicians are analysed in their face-to-face interaction with a public, as well as in sculptures, paintings, photographs, film, television and digital media. The examples range from the Greek agora, where citizens could assemble and be taken in ‘at a single view’, to the Nordic prime ministers’ profile pictures on Facebook.
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The visual construction of personal ethos in election posters
By Orla VigsøAbstractWhen the candidate poster gets to play a more central role in election campaigns, the question of how the candidate is portrayed becomes even more relevant than before. Posters with an image of the candidate must be seen as an attempt at boosting his or her ethos. The picture provides the (potential) voter with an argument for voting for the candidate in question, and this argument clearly has to do with the candidate more than with policies or ideological positions. The size of the portrait, its saliency, shows that the interpretation of personal qualities is the main persuasive feature. But what does ethos actually mean when speaking of portraits of politicians? What are the categories through which ethos can be formulated, and what possible variants exist within each of these categories? One way of categorizing the potentiality of visual representations of ethos is by going back to the Aristotelian definition of the word. In Aristotle, ethos is defined as consisting of three different aspects, or the Aristotelian Trio: phronèsis (competence), arétè (virtue) and eunoia (goodwill), with the addition of two modern features: modesty and youth. This article presents a first attempt at answering the question: how can these aspects be realized visually through the poster?
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In Hoc Signo Vinces! Icons, indices and symbols of Italian political parties: 1946–present
More LessAbstract‘In hoc signo vinces!’ is the phrase that the Roman emperor Constantine saw written in the sky next to a cross in 312 AD: a mystical apparition, shortly before the battle of Milvio Bridge, just outside the city of Rome. The phrase means ‘in this sign you will win’, and it was a good omen, as Constantine defeated Massenzio and put an end to his reign. This phrase has been chosen as the title of this study, which concerns the ‘signs’ that political parties adopted in Italy from 1946 to the present, as these parties have created these signs in order to strike a chord with the citizens and win elections. Apart from the historical account of how these symbols have changed, the aim of this study was to find out to what extent these changes may be read as mirrors of broader shifts, especially in terms of negotiation between the old political language and new, de-ideologized visual languages.
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The politics of the heart: The history, evolution and success of a post-ideological political symbol
More LessAbstractAfter a brief historical overview on the diffusion of the heart symbol and its meanings over the centuries in different cultures and civilizations, this article focuses on the last century, emphasizing that, in the early twentieth century in Western culture, the symbol of the heart retained a religious connotation and was totally alien to the iconographic lexicon of politics. The review of the political posters produced in the main Western and European countries reveals very few exceptions. The extensive iconographic output of the three main twentieth-century ideologies – fascism, nazism and communism – did not use the heart symbol, although they extensively employed visual communication and symbolic language. Its powerful religious meaning and appeal to sentiments like love and mutual support were irreconciliable with those of the three ideologies. The heart’s absence from the political–symbolic repertoire continued even in the post-World War II era. The article points out that this symbol began to make its way into political iconography in the last twenty years of the previous century after the creation of the symbol ‘I ♥ N.Y’ in 1977. The great popularity of Milton Glaser’s invention started a new life for the heart symbol. It acquired new values and meanings and became a symbol of pleasure, friendliness and empathy, in tune with the language and culture of advertising and consumer goods. From this point on, this symbol entered the visual vocabulary of a politics that was facing phenomena such as secularization and de-ideologization. Focusing then on recent Italian history, the article shows that the heart is widely present in the political posters of the so-called Second Republic, which officially started in 1994. The key Italian players of the new political season began to deploy the heart symbol in their visual vocabulary, not with traditional meanings but with new ones, trascending historical political groupings and the traditional left/right ideological axis. Through an extensive visual documentation of some of the most striking cases, the article shows how the use of the symbol of the heart in Italian political iconography continued in the years that followed, always characterized by little or no political meaning. In its final part, the article claims that the emotional trend in the candidates’ and parties’ communication, which found its highest expression in the use of the heart symbol, free of any political or manifesto-related content, is not confined to Italy. The analysis of posters produced in different countries documents how the political use of the heart symbol is now international, from north to south, from east to west, and common to different political alignments, from left to right. In conclusion, the article links the prevalence and great success of a post-ideological and emotive symbol such as the heart with some of the ongoing processes in modern mediatized public life and political communication.
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Dimensions of negativity: Negative campaigning on election posters in Germany and Sweden
Authors: Christina Holtz-Bacha and Bengt JohanssonAbstractThis article gives an overview of previous research on negativity with a particular view on the definitions of negative advertising and operationalizations in content analyses, and briefly summarizes the specificities that must be taken into account in a poster’s design. It then presents findings on German and Swedish posters.
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Postcards from a Journey to Victory: A critical multimodal analysis of The People’s Partnership 2010 Campaign in Trinidad and Tobago
More LessAbstractAdopting a critical, multimodal perspective based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar, this study analyses how, throughout her campaign for the presidency of Trinidad and Tobago in 2010, Kamla Persad-Bissessar forged a self-image of a democratic and caring leader, able to clean up the country from its corruption scandals and foster solidarity and collaboration. The analysis focuses on the official portraits from the rally collected in the booklet Kamla 2010 − The People’s Partnership: Postcards from a Journey to Victory (Drakes 2010).
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Image-making – image management: White House photos and the political iconography of the Obama presidency
More LessAbstractThis article explores the role of Official White House Photos for political image-making and image management during the Obama presidency. Official White House photographers have privileged access to the president in domestic and public situations. They provide high-quality handout photos reflecting the intentions of the Obama administration and are responsible for some of the best-known photos of the President with strategic and historical value. Distributed via the social networking services of the White House, these photos can bypass mainstream journalistic outlets and limit what the public gets to see of certain situations or events. Taking the ‘Years in Photos’ galleries on the official White House Flickr account as a case study, the article qualitatively examines visual choices by the Obama presidency. The dataset consists of 639 photos posted between 2009 and 2015. The author draws on the method of political iconography to reconstruct core motifs of political self-representation. The analysis gives insight into visual strategies central to the President’s image management by focusing on visual portrayals in different roles, settings and relation to others.
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Book Review
More LessAbstractThe Poster: Art, Advertising, Design, and Collecting, 1860s–1900s, Ruth E. Iskin (2014) Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 432 pp., ISBN 978-1-61168-616-6, paperback, $50.00, ISBN 978-1-61168-617-3, ebook
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