@jvpcjournal.bsky.social
The Journal of Visual Political Communication is devoted to the exploration of political forms of persuasive visual communication. Website: https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-visual-political-communication.
We’re pleased to announce that the Journal of Visual Political Communication (www.linkedin.com/company/jour...) is now on LinkedIn.
We look forward to sharing journal updates, new publications, and calls for papers here.
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📢 New Book Review in JVPC, Volume 12, Issue 1!
Darren Lilleker reviews Visual Citizenship: Communicating Political Opinions and Emotions on Social Media by Catherine Bouko (2024).
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Findings reveal the dominance of “confrontation” frames across agencies and countries, reinforcing research on conflict-driven news visuals in moments of democratic crisis.
Using visual analysis of 412 news images, the study examines how agency photographs frame democratic breakdown through lenses of agency, action, and conflict across two national contexts.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 12, Issue 1!
“Demolishing democracy: A comparative visual framing analysis” by Marina Petric compares visual news framing of the US Capitol insurrection and Brazil’s 8 January attack.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Findings show that visual attention matters for high-threshold participation (e.g. purchase intentions), while low-threshold actions (likes, shares) depend more on issue involvement—offering key insights for designing effective political social media campaigns.
Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the study examines how involvement levels, image types, and source cues shape users’ attention and responses to mobilizing political posts.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 12, Issue 1!
“Visual attention to mobilizing political social media posts” by Anna Gaul et al. uses eye-tracking to study how Instagram posts capture attention and mobilize political participation.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
The article shows how the presence or absence of art contributes to meanings of place, revealing how cultural regeneration can also produce exclusion and marginalization when cities fail to enter a truly transindustrial phase.
Using explorative walking in deindustrialized urban spaces, the study compares places transformed by art with neighbouring areas where art—and industrial memory—is absent.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 12, Issue 1!
“Transindustrialization: Art, regeneration and cultural inequalities” by Darren Lilleker & Maike Dinger examines how art shapes regeneration, memory and inequality in post-industrial cities.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
The findings reveal shifting visual grammars—especially after the rollout of vaccines—and expose forms of visual ageism. The article calls for more nuanced and diverse representations of elderhood in political and media communication.
Drawing on visual content analysis of Der Spiegel and Die Apothekenumschau, the study explores how pandemic imagery shaped discourses on age, vulnerability, power, and governance in Germany.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 12, Issue 1!
“Shifting shadows: A visual analysis of the representation of older individuals in German media amidst the pandemic” by Janica Ezzeldien examines how older people were visually portrayed during COVID-19.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
The ICA review deadline is now Dec 12.
If you’re able to submit your #PolComm reviews ahead of the new deadline, it would greatly help us keep the process running smoothly.
Thanks so much for your time and commitment! 💙
Vigsø argues that while stickers offer strong communicative potential, they also create “rhetorical liabilities” that make them strategically risky for parties.
A key contribution to understanding political communication and semiotic practices.
The article analyses the mediacy and rhetorical affordances of stickers—highly flexible, visual, tactile, and usable almost anywhere—yet largely untouched by political parties.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 11, Issue 2!
“Parties against stickers?: On the reluctance of political parties to use stickers” by Orla Vigsø explores why mainstream Scandinavian parties avoid stickers despite their widespread popularity.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Building on recent scholarship viewing stickers as a contemporary form of street art, the article highlights how they multimodally express sociocultural and political–economic issues, offering a democratic form of public communication.
The study explores stickers as ephemeral, mobile signs appearing across everyday spaces—from lampposts to laptops—where they convey political, regulatory, commercial and artistic meanings.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 11, Issue 2!
“Analysing political activism from below” by Kellie Gonçalves, Federico Erba & Forugh Semadeni examines how stickers act as grassroots tools of political activism in Switzerland.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Findings highlight stickers as a distinct medium in linguistic landscapes—using typefaces, graphic citations and visual strategies to express social tensions and urban self-representation.
Using a mixed-method approach, the study explores stickers on politics, football and place identity across the Ruhr Area, revealing how typographic and graphic choices convey ideology, mark territory and build local identity.
📢 New Article in JVPC, Volume 11, Issue 2!
“Sticker culture and its typographic articulation: Politics, football and identity of place in the Ruhr Area” by Irmi Wachendorff analyses 5,156 geo-referenced stickers to show how typography shapes meaning in urban space.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Using a multimodal social semiotic approach, the article shows how environmental activists use stickers to voice concerns, mobilize support and reshape the semiotic landscape—turning local resistance into a visible global message.
Once a small rural village, Lützerath became globally symbolic in Germany’s climate debate as activists opposed its excavation by energy giant RWE.
This study examines its stickerscape as a dynamic, bottom-up communicative practice in public space.
📢 New Article in JVPC Volume 11, Issue 2!
“The stickerscape of environmental activism in Lützerath” by Laura Imhoff explores how stickers became key semiotic tools in the environmental activism surrounding the village of Lützerath.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...
Drawing on chronotopes, social semiotics and stance-taking theory, the study analyses stickered laptops and student questionnaires from Switzerland and Germany. It shows how stickers signal identity, community and political positions—shaped by the mobility of laptops.
Unlike unauthorized stickers in public space, laptop stickering is tied to personal devices, creating a distinct genre shaped by mobility, materiality, and affiliation. As laptops move through different contexts, sticker meanings shift and gain new indexical value.
📢 New Article in JVPC’s Special Issue “Self-Authorized Discourses: The Case of Stickers”!
“Taking a stance with laptop stickers” by Cornelia F. Bock & Florian Busch examines how laptop stickers visually express social, cultural and political stances.
DOI: doi.org/10.1386/jvpc...