Visual Persuasion in a Transforming Europe: the affective and polarizing power of visual content in online political discourse

This project examines the role of digital visual content as a beacon of belonging and polarisation in contemporary political life.

It is well-established that images and videos are experienced as persuasive and affective, and that they play a significant role in political movements. Visual communication is also increasingly prominent online, where it becomes the focus of both connection and conflict.

Movement and countermovement actors use visuals to frame issues, mobilise support, and build (or undermine) legitimacy, and citizens and platforms play a part by modifying, sharing and amplifying such content.

The polarising processes that emerge have not been systematically addressed, as the capacity to analyse the dynamics of networked visual persuasion at large scale has been lacking.

This project aims to understand how, why, and with what consequences visual content becomes a mechanism of integration and polarisation in digitalised societies.

We focus on a controversial issue of cross-generational concern – climate change – and study online political discourse in and around climate movements in Europe.

The project will analyse four areas and the interaction between them: 1) How (counter)movements use visuals in their communication repertoire; 2) The characteristics of such content, its framing and the visual narratives it supports; 3) How online audiences react to it and antagonising counterpublics emerge; and 4) How the content propagates online and what clusters of actors propagate what kind of frames and narratives.

The project forges a unique interdisciplinary framework that combines qualitative approaches, network analysis, and computational text and image analysis methods.

It advances the study of polarisation in its political, societal and affective dimensions, and illuminates dilemmas facing stakeholders that work to engage citizens with climate change online.