Article published In:
Journal of Language and PoliticsVol. 9:2 (2010) ► pp.219–236
The fragility of visuals
How politicians manage their mediated visibility in the press
This study aims at understanding how politicians of both genders who are constantly in the media relate to, and manage, their mediated visibility. I assume that politicians who are constantly subject to visual exposure need to manage their experienced lack of control by developing various strategies in order to feel more empowered than perhaps is possible given the media’s power of framing their political personas. Six Swedish politicians in prominent positions were interviewed qualitatively using open-ended questions relating to their views on press photographers, the role of visuals and personal experiences of being visualised in the press. It was found that the politicians develop both manifest counter-strategies as well as more latent, reflexive ones which all imply an unwillingness to submit to the media’s visual framing power.
Keywords: visuals, qualitative interviews, politicians, press photographers, strategies
References (31)
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.
Besley, John and McComas, Katherine. 2007. Reporting on fairness in civic life: interviews with journalists about writing on local political leaders. International Communication Association 2007 Annual Meeting. 
Corner, John and Pels, Dick (eds). 2003. Media and the Restyling of Politics. London: Sage.
Delli Carpini, Michael X. and Williams, Bruce A. 2001. Let us infotain you: Politics in the new media environment. In: Lance W. Bennett and Robert M. Entman (eds). Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 160–181.
Fountaine, Susan and McGregor, Judy. 2002. Reconstructing gender for the 21st Century: News media framing of political women in New Zealand. Australian New Zealand Communication Association Annual Conference 2002.
Gallagher, Margaret. 2001. Gender Setting: New Agendas for Media Monitoring and Advocacy, London: Zed Books/WACC.
Hallin Daniel C. Hallin and Mancini, Paolo. 2004. Comparing Media Systems. Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Heldman, Caroline, Carroll, Susan J. and Olson, Stephanie. 2005. “She brought only a skirt’’: Print media coverage of Elizabeth Dole’s bid for the Republican Presidential nomination. Political Communication 221, 315–335.
Henderson, Anne. 1999. Getting Even: Women MPs on Life, Power and Politics, Sydney: HarperCollins.
Holly, Werner. 2008. Tabloidization of political communication in the public sphere. In: Ruth Wodak and Veronica Koller (eds). Communication in the Public Sphere. Berlin: de Gruyter, 317–342.
Jankowski, Nicholas W. and Wester, Fred. 1991. The qualitative tradition in social science inquiry: Contributions to mass communication research. In: Klaus Bruhn Jensen and Nicholas W. Jankowski, (eds). A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research. London: Routledge, 44–74.
Jenks, Chris (ed.). 1995. Visual Culture. London: Routledge.
Kellner, Douglas. 2003. Media Spectacle. London: Routledge.
Kroon Lundell, Åsa and Ekström, Mats. 2008. The complex visual gendering of political women in the press. Journalism Studies 9(6), 891–910.
Lees-Marshment, Jennifer. 2001. The product, sales and market-oriented party. How Labour learnt to market the product, not just the presentation. European Journal of Marketing 35(9/10), 1074–1084.
Marshall, P. David. 1997. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McGregor, Judy. 2000. Stereotypes and symbolic annihilation: Press constructions of women at the top. Women in Management Review 15(5/6), 290–295.
Messaris, Paul and Abraham, Linus. 2001. The role of images in framing news stories. In: Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy Jr. and August E. Grant (eds). Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass, 215–225.
Möller, Tommy. 2000. Politikens meningslöshet. Om misstro, cynism och utanförskap. [The meaninglessness of politics. On mistrust, cynicism and alienation]. Malmö: Liber.
Norris, Pippa. 1997. Women leaders worldwide: a splash of color in the photo op. In: Pippa Norris (ed.). Women, Media and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 146–165.
Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen & Co Ltd.
Palser, Barb. 2006. Artful disguises: Sultans of spin masquerade as amateurs on citizen media web sites. American Journalism Review 28(5), 90–90.
Ross, Karen. 2002. Women, Politics, Media: Uneasy Relations in Comparative Perspective, Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press.
Ross, Karen and Sreberny, Annabelle. 2000. Women in the House: Media representations of British politicians. In: Annabelle Sreberny and Liesbet van Zoonen (eds). Gender, Politics and Communication. New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc, 79–99.
Scharrer, Erica. 2002. An “improbable leap”: A content analysis of newspaper coverage of Hillary Clinton’s transition from First Lady to senate candidate. Journalism Studies 3(3), 393–406.
Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa. 2001. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, John B. 1995. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Thorson, Esther and Mendelson, Andrew. 2001. Public perception of news stories and news photos of Hillary Clinton. News Photographer 56(10), 4–10.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In: Gaye Tuchman, Arlene.K. Daniels and James Benét (eds). Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, New York: Oxford University Press, 3–38.
van Zoonen, Liesbet. 2005. Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Wodak, Ruth. 2008. Staging politics in television: fiction and/or reality? In: Stephan Habscheid and Clemens Knobloch (eds). Discourses of Unity. Creating Scenarios of Consensus in Public and Corporate Communication. Stuttgart: Campus, 1–22.
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Lalancette, Mireille & Vincent Raynauld
2020. Politicking and Visual Framing on Instagram: A Look at the Portrayal of the Leadership of Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies :89 ► pp. 257 ff. 
Pauwels, Luc
2019. Visual Methods for Political Communication Research: Modes and Affordances. In Visual Political Communication, ► pp. 75 ff.
ONURSOY, Sibel
2018. Politicians’ Strategies Regarding Their Visual Representations in Media: June 2015 Turkish General Elections. Anadolu Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 18:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
von Sikorski, Christian & Cornelia Brantner
2018. Das Bild in der politischen Kommunikation. In Handbuch Visuelle Kommunikationsforschung [Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
von Sikorski, Christian & Cornelia Brantner
2019. Das Bild in der politischen Kommunikation. In Handbuch Visuelle Kommunikationsforschung, ► pp. 181 ff.
Geise, Stephanie
2017. Visual Framing. In The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, ► pp. 1 ff.
Wagner, Angelia, Linda Trimble, Shannon Sampert & Bailey Gerrits
2017. Gender, Competitiveness, and Candidate Visibility in Newspaper Coverage of Canadian Party Leadership Contests. The International Journal of Press/Politics 22:4 ► pp. 471 ff.
Lobinger, Katharina & Cornelia Brantner
2015. Likable, funny or ridiculous? A Q-sort study on audience perceptions of visual portrayals of politicians. Visual Communication 14:1 ► pp. 15 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.