Likable, funny or ridiculous? A Q-sort study on audience perceptions of visual portrayals of politicians

Visual elements are central components of current political communication. Visual portrayals, for example, convey cues and attributes that can affect the perceived credibility, truthfulness, and suitability of politicians. The pervasive use of images in politics has made visual political communicati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Visual communication (London, England) England), 2015-02, Vol.14 (1), p.15-40
Main Authors: Lobinger, Katharina, Brantner, Cornelia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audiences
Bias
Color
Communication
Content Analysis
Credibility
Cues
Non-verbal communication
Perception
Perceptions
Photography
Political Communication
Politicians
Politics
Qualitative Methods
Visual communication
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Summary:Visual elements are central components of current political communication. Visual portrayals, for example, convey cues and attributes that can affect the perceived credibility, truthfulness, and suitability of politicians. The pervasive use of images in politics has made visual political communication an important research area. Yet, analyses in the field predominantly use content analyses to examine the valence of visual portrayals. The present study investigates how the audience actually interprets visual cues and composition elements in the images of politicians and compares the results with the findings of content analyses. A card-sorting technique (Q-sort) and qualitative interviews are employed to capture subjective and intuitive interpretations of 33 color photographs of a politician. When compared with the attribute measurements of previous content analyses, the results show a strong accordance in the audience interpretation and the attribute analysis regarding an unfavorable political depiction. However, the findings indicate disagreement about the composition of a favorable depiction.
ISSN:1470-3572
1741-3214
DOI:10.1177/1470357214554888