Politics as spectacle - visual representation of political agenda

With the migration from traditional news media to social media, understanding how citizens learn about politics and current affairs from these sources has become increasingly important. The use of social networking sites has become fully integrated into the strategies of political parties. Visualizations of political communication are becoming increasingly available across a variety of platforms and in many forms.
Visual political communication on social media platforms merges the personal and the professional realm of politicians’ lives. Ekman & Widholm (2014) argue that contemporary politics is increasingly celebritised, both in terms of how politicians are folded into specific celebrity frames in the news media and in the way politicians ‘perform’ their own professional and private identities through frequent use of social media. Dean & Andrews (2021) refer to celebritisation as a logic and thus view celebritisation as uneven, multifaceted, and present in different forms and to different degrees depending on context.
Edelman (1988) describes actions of politicians as spectacle, where politicians act by a certain manner in order to gain advantage and dominate creation of the meaning. In the political scene, according to Edelman, use of language is central in construction of beliefs about events and political leadership, in definitions of political antagonists as well as constructing social problems, issues and crises.
In context of personalisation and celebritisation of politicians, it is important to gain more knowledge of what role visuals play in politicians’ ‘performance’ in order to frame specific political issues and construct political identity in relation to other parties/politicians. As illustrated above, there is prominent research body regarding celebritisation of individual politicians, as for example Donald Trump. However, we still lack more knowledge about the ways and means for how visuals are used in creating parties’ political identity and how political issues and problems are framed and put on the (social) media agenda. The study problematises performative processes of how the different political parties within political discourse are utilizing the visual content as well as how social media is responding to that, and how they in turn are visually contextualizing the ongoing political discussion.
This study is a work on progress. The objective of this study is to explore and understand the role of visual content in digital platforms, in how different parties visualise their political agenda and issues on social media platforms. The study addresses the lack of research with a visual focus within the field of political communication and strategic communication in large, as well as aspect of an intersectional discussion, bridging strategic communication, political science, journalism and visual representation.