Visual Politics in the Global South

The role of the visual in politics is gaining momentum in scholarly work concerned with the current social media landscape. It is widely acknowledged that the production, dissemination and consumption of visual products in the Global South is powerfully shaped by geo-politics and a power dynamics in which the Global North dominates the South (the cultural imperialism argument). However, scant attention has been paid to theoretical, methodological, and empirically grounded approaches to visual politics produced by scholars working in the Global South. Little is known about the ways in which scholarship in the Global South might challenge and resist western approaches to the study of the visual. Against this background, this project aims to examine visual politics in the Global South through theoretically driven, and empirically grounded case studies, which focus on the role of the visual in formal politics (e.g., political campaigns, the relation between state and citizens) and public and everyday politics (e.g., social movements, activism, grassroots politics, civil society initiatives). This volume examines visual politics in the Global South through theoretically driven, and empirically grounded case studies, which focus on the role of the visual in formal politics (e.g., political campaigns, the relation between state and citizens) and public and everyday politics. It will be of interest to both researchers and students interested in the study of visual politics from various disciplinary lens (media and communication, anthropology, politics, and sociology). 

Chapter 1- Introduction to Visual Politics in the Global South.- Part One- Campaigns, governance, and visual politics.- Chapter 2- Playing with accents in the Khede Kasra campaign in Lebanon: Multimodality in visual politics.- Chapter 3- Elections and social media cultures: politics, women and visuals in West Bengal, India.- Chapter 4- Visualising Hegemony and Resistance: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Covid-19 Hero” on Chinese Social Media.- Chapter 5- The visual construction of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s populist communication on Facebook.- Chapter 6- Los Pinos, a Presidential Residence: Farándula politics and populism 2.0 in Mexican visual culture.- Chapter 7- Representing Change and Continuity. A Visual Analysis of Television Political Advertising for the 2020 Constitutional Plebiscite in Chile.- Chapter 8- Mapping the formats and significance of signs and meaning in political campaigns in Ghanaian elections.- Part Two- Activism, citizenship and citizen-led visual communication.- Chapter 9- The “Capuchas” Revolution: a performative icon of the Chilean Feminist Movement.- Chapter 10- Visualizing the transversal, parochial, and naïve – the artist as citizen’s trope.- Chapter 11- The visual politics of extractivism.- Chapter 12- ‘Abaixando a Máquina 2’/ Lowering the Camera 2: the power of professional photojournalism in changing the course of the 2013 mass protests in Rio de Janeiro.- Chapter 13- Protest Images of the 2014 Gaza war in the South Africa media.- Chapter 14- The appropriation of visual campaigns by the Laklãnõ people (Brazil).

 

Anastasia Veneti is Principal Academic at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University. Her research lays at the intersection of media and politics, including political communication, digital political campaigning, media framing, protests and social movements, visual communication and photojournalism. Her work has been published in edited volumes and academic journals. Works include:  The Emerald Handbook of Digital Media in Greece. Political Communication and Journalism in Times of Crisis (co-edited collection, Emerald, 2020), Visual Political Communication (co-edited collection, Palgrave, 2019), Political Advertising and Citizens’ Perceptions (Nisos, 2009 in Greek), special issue on Picturing Protest: Visuality, visibility and the public sphere, in Visual Communication (co-edited, 2017). She is co-convenor of the Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research, BU.

Maria Rovisco is Associate Professor in Sociology at the School at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK.  She was previously a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. She has research interests in cosmopolitanism, new activisms, citizenship, migrant and refugee arts, and visual culture. Among her books are the co-edited volumes: Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Cosmopolitanism, Religion and the Public Sphere (Routledge, 2014), The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism (Routledge, 2017). Twitter handle: @mariarovisco