image depicting power essay

Images matter: the power of the visual in political communication

Associate Professor of Political Communication, Bournemouth University

Senior Lecturer in Marketing Communication, Bournemouth University

Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University

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Darren Lilleker has received funding from the AHRC.

Anastasia Veneti and Daniel Jackson do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Bournemouth University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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Human culture is a visual culture. From cave paintings to selfies, we have always used images to tell stories about our lives, experiences and understanding of the world.

These images are particularly potent when they not only depict, but instruct us about social norms – when they shape attitudes and behaviour on everything from the role of women to ideas about nationhood.

But the idea that a picture “never lies” is a powerful – and inaccurate – adage. For they do not always tell the whole story. And the fact that images may be strategically constructed, manipulated or chosen carefully to convey an impression, can often go unnoticed by the people looking at them.

This is a problem, because images tap into a fundamental element of human reasoning. They have a resonant power to stir strong emotions – of fear, dislike, love, hate, and everything in between. Widely shared footage of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi led to the first protests in Tunisia and the eventual fall of the Ben Ali regime .

But we do not need to look for exceptional circumstances to find images having political power. Images of migrants have been used to promote anti-immigration stances; images of homeless veterans are used to counter government policies to house refugees; images of stranded polar bears are used to promote environmental policies.

All of these are examples of images being chosen to convey specific messages. They can also be carefully constructed, such as when British the prime minister, Boris Johnson, spoke recently in front of ranks of uniformed police officers – a setting which may have been planned to enforce an image of power and strength. But there are also images which defy planning, such as Johnson struggling with a large bull, which can be used by critics as an easy metaphor, mocking his ability to control events.

Don’t believe your eyes

Images tap into attitudes, but not always in the same way for every viewer. Instead, an image’s perceived level of influence is based on “believability”. This is the idea that it is true if we agree, fake if we disagree. And it is here that the power of images intersects with the great challenge of the digital age.

Fake news , for example, is awarded far greater power if delivered with an image that appears believable and reinforces existing media tropes and public beliefs.

But the ease with which images can be adjusted and skewed for a specific political purpose, like slowing down a video to make a politician appear drunk , makes the persuasive power of visual evidence highly dangerous.

Our research into the power of images and visual political communication suggests it can be positive or negative for a pluralist democracy. The dependent factor is how it is used.

In the context of election campaigns, for example, the digital age enables a more negative environment. It is easy to create a simple attack message and gain traction, as voters create their own election campaign communication and associated memes.

Read more: I create manipulated images and videos – but quality may not matter much

Yet platforms such as Instagram can also be used to humanise a candidate. Following the example of Barack Obama and others, many politicians have embraced the use of selfies and social media films to attempt to ingratiate themselves with the electorate. One recent example was Rory Stewart , whose use of social media gained him attention during his short bid for the leadership of the UK Conservative Party.

But while such tactics can mobilise supporters, manage impressions, and amplify political messages, it also means political campaigns become more superficial. The question is whether citizens are more manipulated as the visual vocabularies of election candidates further emotionalise political communication.

Such processes are not isolated to campaigns of course. Political leaders use visual communication to shape their public image, and subtle differences in visual representation can have significant effects on their public perceptions.

Seeing through people

President Donald Trump constantly uses images on social media to create an impression of a certain kind of success, power, and leadership. He also appears to be ever mindful of the image he portrays, putting great effort into his stance and gestures, and displays of presidential power.

The use of symbolism is widespread in the political sphere, as political actors seek to harness the power of social media for impression management. Such devices also prove effective, with even the simplest facial expression able to have a profound impact on people’s perceptions.

Amateur activists too have learned to harness the power of visual communication. Images denoting solidarity and collective action have been used by campaigns like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo to show how social media, and its potential for the co-creation of compelling visual montages, permits new forms of public political expression.

But despite campaigns attempting to tap into the political currency of pictures, different content forms elicit different emotional responses. The challenge for protest movements is to develop a consistent, interconnected theme, and to be aware of their audience and differences in reception.

Visual political communication has become increasingly important over recent years. It is central to the politics of illusion, and plays an important role in the phenomenon of populist rhetoric. Visuals are thus central to the politics of our time, for good or ill, with the power to stimulate emotions and elicit engagement – among an often disengaged and apathetic electorate.

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Power of images: creating the myths of our time.

By J. Francis Davis

We see them everywhere: on billboards, in magazines, on bus placards. They come in the mail and in our Sunday newspapers: glossy pictures of women and men in silk robes, pictures of electric twin-foil shavers and Dirt Devil hand-held vacuums. And we see them on TV: living rooms with two sofas, white-lighted football stadiums, even Wild West gunfight and bloodstained murder scenes.

Images. They are so compelling that we cannot not watch them. They are so seductive that they have revolutionized human social communication. Oral and written communication are in decline because a new form of communication, communication by image, has emerged.

The History of Communication

The history of human social interchange has evolved through three distinct phases: oral, text-based, and now image-centered communication. In oral cultures, learning and tradition were passed on by word of mouth, primarily through storytelling. The invention of writing made it possible to preserve information and literary traditions beyond the capacity of memory, but the circulation of hand-written books was still limited to an elite few.

With the invention of the printing press, written texts were in effect transferred from the exclusive property of those wealthy enough to afford hand-copied manuscripts to a broad reading public. Elizabeth Eisenstien, in The Printing Press As An Agent of Change, dramatizes this emergence by considering the case of inhabitants of Constantinople born in 1453, the year that he Byzantine capital fell to the Turks.

People born in that pivotal year who lived to be 50 saw more books produced in their lifetimes-some eight million-than been written in the previous thousand years of Constantinople's existence. The Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the rise of Western science are just a few of the revolutions spurred by the ability to mass-produced books and newspapers and the growing ability of common folk to read them.

A similar revolution began about 150 years ago with the invention of photography. For the first time, visual representation of objects in space could be reproduced on a mass scale. Image communication was born.

It only took about 50 years for this new method of representation to become a major player in the communication of social values in American society. The rise of the advertising industry spurred this change, for advertisers quickly learned that the most effective way to sell products was not through stories or plain-text facts, but through the creation of images that appealed to basic human needs and emotions.

Television cemented the era of image communication. In one sense television has turned back the clock to the era of oral storytelling, for television tells stories and we watch and listen just like our ancestors who sat mesmerized around campfires.

But television's most important stories are those not verbalized-the stories and myths hidden in its constant flow of images. These images suggest myths-and thus help construct our world and values-in much the same way that stories did in oral culture.

What Are Images?

Simply put, images are pictures. However, in our culture pictures have become tools used to elicit specific and planned emotional reactions in the people who see them. These pictures-these images-are created to give us pleasure-as when we watch The Cosby Show-or to make us anxious when we forget our deodorant or lipstick. Images work best at this task when they are vivid and emotionally saturated. The American flag elicits more powerful emotions than an Idaho potato on a couch, for example. The potato might make us laugh, but the flag is full of multiple and often contradictory meanings and associations-everything from the story of how Francis Scott Key wrote the The Star-Spangled Banner to flag burning as a protest against the Vietnam War.

The flag works as an image because it suggests a long list of stories and myths that are buried inside us. Image makers hope that in the moment it takes to "consume" an ad or commercial frame, their carefully selected graphics-like the image of the flag-will evoke emotions and memories bubbling deep within us. Pictures that evoke these deep memories can be very powerful-and also very spiritual.

In calling up these deep emotions and memories, however, today's images have taken on new meanings and have created new myths that are shrouded-often deliberately-by these deeper memories. These new myths lie at the heart of modern American culture, and illustrate the double-edged power of today's images.

The New Myths

Traditionally, a myth has been defined as a story or idea that explains the culture or customs of a people. Often myths describe heroes or explain why a people revere the sun, or why elders should be respected. Myths are the motivating stories or ideas common cultural practices.

This understanding of myth leaves little room for the common misperception that myths are simply false or superstitious ideas. Instead, myths are the ideas and stories that motivate daily behavior.

The key to recognizing the new myths of the image culture is to think of them as ideas that emerge from long exposure to patterns of images-not as myths that can be seen readily in one or two images. In fact, these myths are unconvincing unless one thinks of them as emerging from a huge glut of images which come from many sources, including advertising, entertainment and news.

Another way to put this is to say that today's images must be read on two levels. First there is the immediate, emotional level on which we recognize the flag or the sexy body and react in a way that taps our inner stories or emotions.

But second, there is a much broader stage on which we can step back and look at one image in context with hundreds of others. This second level is where we can see the new myths of the image clearly otherwise these basic ideas are obscured by the powerful stories and emotional connections that are used to sell them. Once identified, however, they are easy to recognize, even among all the media messages that daily bombard us.

MYTH #1. The world is a dangerous place and we need guns, police and military to protect us. Media critics often focus on violent entertainment dramas such as cop shows and movies like Terminator 2. But graphic reports of crime and terror on the news probably have a greater influence in creating our feeling that the world is unsafe. Newsmakers feature shocking, violent stories because they sell newspapers and raise ratings. And our belief that news stories are "real" and thus could happen to us heightens their impact.

MYTH #2. Leave it to the experts (who are usually white men). Again, "real life" images-or those we assume to be real-are most important here because they set the pattern for our assumptions about who has power. The authority figures we see presenting the national news are white, middle-aged men. And when an "expert" is interviewed about a crisis or program, as in a study of Nightline guests by the progressive media criticism organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.) the pattern is predictable; nine out of 10 were white males. On Nightline and elsewhere, the views of women, persons of color and representatives of alternate voices of all kinds are customarily absent.

Images found in advertisements and commercials, as well as the national news, reinforce this power structure. Contrast the traditional sex roles of advertisements for Chivas Regal, showing successful professional men in business suits with the stereotypic portraits of women and men in food ads that cast women as kitchen "experts." Many other media images depend on predefined roles based on gender or race.

MYTH #3. The good life consists of buying possessions that cost lots of money. Living well is synonymous with wealth, according to the pictures and advertisements we see of homes and yards and cars. Big houses, yachts, fancy wine, dinner parties with silver and crystal, romantic evenings overlooking the ocean, vacations to Bermuda, sailing, BMW's, fancy two-oven sunlit kitchens: the list goes on and on. All are part of a luxurious lifestyle that is available for our enjoyment-if only we can afford it.

We can even purchase a little of it vicariously, if we can't have it all, by drinking fancy liquors or by driving a car that's out of our price range and financing it over 10 years. Some people call it status-but the myth behind the status myth is that we are getting the "good life."

MYTH#4. Happiness, satisfaction and sex appeal, just to name a few, are imminent-and available with the next consumer purchase. Alas, even when we are wealthy, there's always something missing. We don't have the right woman or man, our car stalls at an intersection, we spend too much time doing housework. But a whole group of images imply that we are on the verge of being happy.

These images are largely advertisements. For example, Hope perfume. Joy dishwashing detergent, or "Oh what a feeling-Toyota!" People in these advertisements are gleefully happy, surrounded by lovers, leaping into the air in rapturous joy. Often, the instrument that brings this instant happiness is technology. We can buy the technology to make us happy.

MYTH #5. Your body is not good enough. Many-if not most-of the women and men we see in the media are slim, muscular and good-looking. We, on the other hand, are always too fat, out-of-shape and smelly-though our friends don't always tell us so forthrightly. We are trained to worry, for example, that people will not even tell us if we smell bad because that kind of criticism is embarrassing.

Most disturbing, however, is the constant stream of perfect people advertising everything from auto parts to Haynes stockings. We are never told that almost all photo-advertisers make their subjects look better, so that legs are slimmer, eyes are bluer and faces have no freckles.

MYTH #6. Businesses and corporations are concerned for the public welfare. Short of an environmental disaster like the Alaskan oil spill we see almost no advertisements and few news stories that shed negative light on corporations or businesses. This is not to suggest that all of these organizations are bad. It is worth noting, however, that most corporate images appear in ads purchased or stories placed by the businesses themselves, so it's hardly surprising that the messages we hear are relentlessly positive.

We see full-page color ads for Chevron talking about its concern for the environment. Or news items reporting that gasoline emissions are down because of a new formula developed by ARCO. Ads from tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds discourage kids under 18 from smoking. And business-oriented magazine and talk shows like Wall Street Week cater to the interests of PBS' upscale audience, reporting business and financial trends, while we see none from a labor perspective.

So Why Does This Matter?

To ask the question another way, how are these myths hurting us? The rest of this issue suggests a variety of answers, but in the Rise of the Image Culture , Elizabeth Thoman perhaps put is best when she points out that these myths have become a substitute for the search for meaning which other generations sought in more expansive and significant ways. We no longer face uncharted oceans and unexplored continents, but with a universe of space and time to explore uncounted problems to solve we need not end all our quests at the shopping mall.

Many of us feel a sense of dissatisfaction, a void that the myths of the image culture and the material goods they sell do little to fill. Besides the money, creativity and resources that the making and selling of these images waste, they also represent a gigantic "red herring," a signpost to an empty journey, a joust with the windmills of our culture, leaving us like confused Don Quixote's looking for a real opponent.

In this sense, the myths of the image culture are "false or superstitious ideas" as well as "motivating stories or ideas behind common cultural practices."

We do have signposts pointing other ways, however, and learning to read images is the first step in the right direction. This issue and its accompanying Media Literacy Workshop Kit� are designed to be a primer on the basic principles of media literacy, using analysis that helps us read images as a beginning point.

Only when we learn to read these myths on a daily basis will we have the power to substitute other motivating ideas and goals of our choosing. Only then can we consciously transcend the Age of Image Communication and stop blindly accepting the myths of the image culture.

J. Francis Davis, an adult educator and media education specialist, was on the staff of the Center for Media Literacy from 1989 to 1992. He holds an M.Div. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta where he currently works in the computer industry and lives with his wife, Elizabeth, and their children.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Portraits of african leadership.

Commemorative Figure (Lefem)

Standing Male and Female Figures

Buffalo figure

Elephant Figure

Seated Male Figure

Oba with Animals

Alexander Ives Bortolot Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

October 2003

In Africa, sculptural depictions of rulers and ancestral heroes have served a variety of political, spiritual, and commemorative functions. Passed down along dynastic lines or commissioned by current rulers, such images were often displayed as evidence of pedigree to justify and consolidate power, and sometimes served as conduits for communication between the ancestors and their living successors . Rulers often utilized the medium of portraiture to present themselves to their subjects, frequently in idealized terms that conveyed their physical, intellectual, and spiritual superiority. Often the very act of commissioning a portrait was an indication of the ruler’s power and dynastic legitimacy that demonstrated the individual’s control over important economic and artistic resources. In some political traditions, it also showed that a ruler had undergone ritual processes of investiture that revealed his or her underlying character and ultimate destiny—features that could then be realized in visual form. Some types of portraiture were not figural at all but evoked the subject metaphorically by portraying a set of personal attributes in visual form. Finally, portraits might serve an honorific purpose , memorializing eminent members of the community.

Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “Portraits of African Leadership.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aprt/hd_aprt.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Borgatti, Jean M., and Richard Brilliant. Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Center for African Art, 1990.

Additional Essays by Alexander Ives Bortolot

• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Living Rulers .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Memorials .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Portraits of African Leadership: Royal Ancestors .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ The Transatlantic Slave Trade .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Trade Relations among European and African Nations .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Ways of Recording African History .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Art of the Asante Kingdom .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Asante Royal Funerary Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Asante Textile Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Gold in Asante Courtly Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ The Bamana Ségou State .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Dona Beatriz, Kongo Prophet .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Exchange of Art and Ideas: The Benin, Owo, and Ijebu Kingdoms .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History: Idia, First Queen Mother of Benin .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Malagasy Funerary Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Malagasy Textile Arts .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of Madagascar: Maroserana and Merina .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Kuba Kingdom .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Kingdoms of the Savanna: The Luba and Lunda Empires .” (October 2003)
• Bortolot, Alexander Ives. “ Women Leaders in African History, 17th–19th Century .” (October 2003)

Related Essays

• Portraits of African Leadership: Living Rulers
• Portraits of African Leadership: Memorials
• Portraits of African Leadership: Royal Ancestors
• Senufo Sculpture from West Africa : An Influential Exhibition at the Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1963
• African Christianity in Kongo
• African Influences in Modern Art
• Kongo Ivories
• Trade Relations among European and African Nations
• Tutsi Basketry
• Ways of Recording African History
• Women Leaders in African History, 17th–19th Century
• Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo
• Women Leaders in African History: Dona Beatriz, Kongo Prophet
• Women Leaders in African History: Idia, First Queen Mother of Benin
• Central Africa, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Central Africa, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Central Africa, 1900 A.D.–present
• Eastern Africa, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Eastern Africa, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Eastern Africa, 1900 A.D.–present
• Guinea Coast, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Guinea Coast, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Guinea Coast, 1900 A.D.–present
• Southern Africa, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Southern Africa, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Southern Africa, 1900 A.D.–present
• Anthropomorphism
• Central Africa
• Deity / Religious Figure
• Eastern Africa
• Ejagham Art
• Guinea Coast
• North Africa
• Religious Art
• Southern Africa
• Western Africa
• Western North Africa (The Maghrib)

Online Features

• Connections: “Africa” by Alisa LaGamma

These three pictures make a powerful statement about race and power among women

It can be difficult to understand how important representation is — until we are faced with a reversed gaze. O, the Oprah Magazine did just that for a photo essay featured in the publication's May 2017 issue on race. 

In a feature aptly titled "Let's Talk About Race," photographer Chris Buck took three photos that flipped stereotypical tropes on their heads by reversing roles typically held by women of color with white women — and vice versa. 

In one photo, Asian women are at a nail salon having their pedicures done by white women while chatting and laughing. 

Another photo is of a young white girl looking up at shelves upon shelves of black dolls.

In the final photo of the series, a young Latina woman is seen sitting in a lavish chair at a luxurious apartment holding a Yorkshire Terrier while a white maid is pouring her a cup of tea. The young woman is also on the phone and not even acknowledging the presence of the maid.

It's been said that photos are worth a thousand words, and these three photos depict a complex conversation about race, class and power among women. Buck said there are a number of interpretations to the photos.

For the photographer, the baseline intention of the project was to bend race expectations. "When you see an image of someone from a different background, what is your expectation of them?" Buck asked rhetorically over the phone. "When you see an image from someone [of a different race], what is your expectation of them and are we challenging it? Why do we expect a certain thing from someone of a [certain race] and expect them to be serving another [race]?"

Although the creator of the series, Buck said he didn't come up with the concept behind the photos. Lucy Kaylin, editor-in-chief at  O, the Oprah Magazine , curated the feature, and the publication's creative and editorial department commissioned Buck as the photographer of the piece. Kaylin said the main impetus behind the feature was to encourage an honest and passionate dialogue about race. She said the main concept of the feature came out of an ideation meeting with Oprah Winfrey herself. 

"It was a topic on all of our minds and [Winfrey] was eager for us to tackle it," Kaylin said in an email. "The main thing we wanted to do was deal with the elephant in the room—that race is a thorny issue in our culture, and tensions are on the rise. So let's do our part to get an honest, compassionate conversation going, in which people feel heard and we all learn something—especially how we can all do better and move forward."

Buck, a white male photographer, said he didn't find it easy when he was commissioned to do the piece. As a white person, Buck said he is often in his own prism or world so it was rewarding for him to contextualize and see how people of different races perceive the world differently.

Buck said he believes it's essential to his job as a photographer to engage in conversations about race and social justice. He believes part of the reason why the feature was successful is that it was delivered with a light touch rather than a finger-pointing or "bossy" attitude.

"As a photographer in the U.S., for me to not be engaged in these issues would be a blind spot," Buck said over the phone. "It's important for me to be involved in stories like this, and help them become more nuanced and interesting. This is my job." 

Buck's photos seem to have resonated with a lot of social media users — particularly women of color. Judy Gerlade, 21, is one of many who was moved by the feature. On Sunday, the Filipina-Chinese American posted these photos on Twitter and her tweet went viral .

In an email, Geralde said these photos reflect the internal struggles she endured due to the lack of representation of Asian women, as well as, the "overbearing whiteness" in her own childhood. 

"It was incredibly difficult to feel like I had my own sense of belonging," Geralde said. "White seemed to be 'normal' from going to school and being one of the very few Asian Americans there, to seeing what was on the television screen — overbearing whiteness," she said.

Growing up, Geralde only had one Asian doll and it was Mulan. All the other dolls were white. So, even as a young child beyond the ability to comprehend race theory, Geralde knew she desired to relate to something or someone. "I realize that even as a child I was craving for someone to look like me, to be similar to me — something or someone to relate to," Geralde added. 

Geralde isn't alone in her sentiment. Several other Twitter users expressed how powerful those pictures were to them.

Unfortunately, some social media users have gone so far as to accuse these photos of perpetuating "reverse-racism" or placing blame on white people for the status of certain women of color. Here are a few examples.

Buck, a white man, is unfazed by the online critics. He said that people's concerns and criticisms are valid, but said people who are overly sensitive (or easily offended) from all sides of all aisles have to "relax a little bit." Buck said he hopes conversations about these photos extend far beyond the virtual world and takes place in real life. 

"If someone's feelings are hurt, and this is like pointing a finger at them, then great, let's talk about it," Buck said. "If this begins a conversation, then that's great – that's my take on it. It's fine if [the conversation] begins online, but more importantly, they should be carried out in the real world."

Power Portrayed

User-created.

This user gallery has been created by an independent third party and may not represent the views of the institutions whose collections include the featured works or of Google Arts & Culture.

I've created this collection in order to explore the concept of power and what that means in regards to art. Throughout history art has been created for various reasons: to record important events, for religious or political causes, etc. And many times works of art were created and used to as propaganda. Pieces were created purely to "advertise" the good qualities of a certain person and to convince people or entire populations of that person's competence as a leader. Or it could be used for the opposite reason: to show a certain individual or event in a bad light, and thus cause others to reject them. However, in this collection I will focus on how art has been used to shed a positive light on an individual and what that looks like. In other words this collection will explore how an artist uses image to convey a sense of power and leadership to the viewer, enough that they

The Power of Images in Global Politics

We live in a visual age. Images shape international events and our understandings of them. Photographs, cinema and television influence how we view and approach phenomena as diverse as war, humanitarian disasters, protest movements, financial crises and election campaigns. The dynamics of visual politics go well beyond traditional media outlets. Digital media, from Twitter to Instagram, play an increasingly important role across the political spectrum, from terrorist recruitment drives to social justice campaigns. Fashion and videogames are frequently derived from and enact the militarised world we live in. Drones, satellites, and surveillance cameras profile terrorist suspects and identify military targets. Images surround everything we do. This omnipresence of images is political and has changed fundamentally how we live and interact in today’s world.

More and more scholars have started to examine the power of images in global politics.  Over the past six years I have had the privilege of working with 51 of them.   The result of our collaboration is a volume on Visual Global Politics that has come out in March 2018.  We address a broad range of political themes, from colonialism, diplomacy and peace to rape, religion and protest.  Visual themes are just as broad and include not only two dimensional images, as highlighted above, but also three-dimensional visual artefacts and performances, such as border installations, churches, national monuments and parades.

My aim in this article is to outline some of the key themes that our collaboration has brought to the fore. There is no way I can possibly do so in a comprehensive way.  I will inevitably have to forgo a range of important topics, such as the role of icons and emotions or the persistent challenge to understand the impact of images.  Given the brevity of this piece I will refrain from mentioning the specific work of my collaborators or the numerous other scholars who have made significant contributions to visual politics.  Readers who wish to explore these authors and sources and the associated complexities will find them in the book’s introduction and its 51 chapters.  Those who wish to take a quick glance can find it in this short video here .

The Visual Turn in Global Politics

It has become common to speak of a visual turn in the study of global politics: the recognition that images and visual artefacts play an increasingly crucial role in depicting and shaping the world we live in.

Our understanding of terrorism, for instance, is inevitably intertwined with how images dramatically represent the events in question, how these images circulate world-wide, and how politicians and the public respond to these visual impressions. Take the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. There is no way to understand the origin, nature and impact of the event without understanding the role of images. The attack was designed for visual impact. Images circulated instantly around the globe, giving audiences a sense of how shocking and terrible the event was. Many of these emotional images not only shaped subsequent public debates and policy responses, including the war on terror, but also remain engrained in our collective consciousness.

Fig 1:  Terrorist attacks of 11 September 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Images are, of course, not new, nor have they replaced words as the main means of communication. Images and visual artefacts have been around from the beginning of time. The visual has always been part of life. Images were produced not only to capture key aspects of human existence, but also to communicate these aspects to others. Examples range from prehistoric cave paintings that document hunting practices to Renaissance works of art. Some of these images and cultural artefacts we still see today and they continue to influence our perception and understanding of the world.

But, there are two ways in which the politics of images has changed fundamentally.

First is the speed at which images circulate and the reach they have. Not that long ago, during the time of the Vietnam War, it would have taken days if not weeks for a photograph taken in the war zone to reach the front-page of, say, the New York Times. In today’s digital world, a photograph or a video can reach audiences world-wide immediately after it has been taken. Media networks can now make a local event almost instantaneously global, whether it is a terrorist attack, a protest march, an election campaign rally or any other political phenomena.

Second is what one could call the democratisation of visual politics. It used to be that very few actors – states or global media networks – had access to images and the power to distribute them to a global audience. Today, everyone can take a photograph with a smartphone, upload it on social media and circulate it immediately with a potential world-wide reach.  Any individual or small group, no matter what their location or political intent, can potentially produce and circulate images that, in today’s new media language, go viral.  The result is an unprecedented visualisation of both our private lives and our political landscape: a visual communication revolution that has shaken the foundations and hierarchies of established media networks. We see a dismantling of the division between broadcaster and viewer, producer and consumer.

The Challenge of Understanding the Politics of Images

Images work at numerous overlapping levels: across national boundaries and between physical and psychological worlds. They come in complex and wide varieties: as photographs or films, as comics or videogames. Things get even more complex when we think of three-dimensional visual artefacts, such as architecture, military uniforms or monuments.

But no matter how diverse and complex visual images and artefacts are, they all have one thing in common: they work differently than words. That is their very nature. They are non-verbal and often ambiguous and infused with emotions. This is also the key challenge we observers and scholars face: how to translate the politics of images into words while doing justice to the unique nature and political significance of visuality.

Photographs offer a good illustration of the issues at stake.  They appear to communicate clearly and truth-fully, yet they deceive us.  They seem to give us a glimpse of the real. They provide us with the seductive belief that what we see in a photograph is an authentic representation of the world: a slice of life that reveals exactly what was happening at a particular moment. The illusion of authenticity also masks the political values that such photographic representations embody. The assumption that photographs are neutral, value free and evidential, is reinforced because photography captures faces and events in memorable ways.

It is precisely the illusion of authenticity that makes photographs such powerful tools to convey the meaning of political events to distant audiences.  Spectators view and re-view crises through various media sources until the enormity of the event seems graspable. In doing so, photographs not only shape an individual’s perception but also larger, collective forms of consciousness.

Photographs are thus politically partial and not just because they can be manipulated and faked. All images – still and moving ones – always express a particular perspective.  Images reflect certain aesthetic choices. They represent the world from a particular angle. They inevitably exclude as much as they include. A photograph cannot be neutral because it always is an image chosen and composed by a particular person. It is taken from a particular angle, and then produced and reproduced in a certain manner, thereby excluding a range of alternative ways of capturing the object in question.

Similar political processes are at play when it comes to our individual and collective efforts of understanding images.  Photographs do not make sense by themselves. They need to be seen and interpreted. They gain meaning in relation to other images and the personal and societal assumptions and norms that surround us.  Our viewing experience is thus intertwined not only with previous experiences, such as our memory of other photographs we have seen in the past, but also with the values and visual traditions that are accepted as common sense by established societal norms. There are inevitably power relationships involved in this nexus between visuality, society, and politics.

Look at one of the most iconic images of the past few decades, the ‘Tiananmen Man’ image, depicting a lone protester in front of a series of tanks. This image immediately makes sense for many people around the world, as long as they know about the historic event in Beijing in 1989: the occurrence of the protest movement and its suppression by the police. But many people inside China, for whom depictions and reportage of Tiananmen massacre remain censored, do not have the background knowledge necessary to interpret this photograph let alone recognise it as an icon.

How Images and Visual Artefacts Function Politically

Understanding the aesthetic and political dynamics associated with visuality is, of course, far too complex to be summarized in a few simple propositions.  I would thus like to draw attention to just one important aspect: images and visual artefacts do not only represent the world but also, and in doing so, influence the associated political dynamics.

Images and visual artefacts do things. They are political forces in themselves. They often shape politics as much as they depict it. Early modern cartographic techniques played a key role in legitimising the emergence of territorial states. Hollywood films provide us with well-rehearsed and deeply entrenched models of heroes and villains to the point that they shape societal values. A terrorist suicide bombing is designed to kill people with a maximum visual impact: images of the event are meant to go around the world and spread fear.

Consider how images and artefacts visually depict and perform and thus politically frame a sense of identity and community. Flags, parades, religious symbols, monuments and mausoleums are just the most obvious examples.  Look at the Mao Mausoleum, located at the already mentioned Tiananmen Square in Beijing.  It is a national monument designed to celebrate China’s revolutionary sprit and foster a sense of identity, unity and purpose.  Even today, when the Chinese government has moved on from the radical and violent revolutionary spirit of Mao, thousands of people still line up and wait for hours to pay their respect to the preserved body of the Chairman.

Fig 2: Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, Beijing. Source: Roland Bleiker

Images and visual artefacts tell us something about the world and, perhaps more importantly, about how we see the world. They are witnesses of our time and of times past. Monuments remind us of past events and their significance for today’s political communities.  Satellite images provide information about the world’s surface. Photographs document wars or diplomatic summits or protest movements.

Visual Power: Domination and Resistance

Images and visual artefacts are neither progressive nor regressive. They can entrench existing power relations or they can uproot them. There are plenty of examples of how visuality served existing political forces and structures.  The paradigmatic here is Leni Riefenstahl. Her stunning films of Nazi rallies, such as Triumph of the Will or Olympia , helped the Nazi regime turn mere propaganda into a broader mythology that was instrumental in gaining popular support for a racist and militaristic state apparatus.  Socialist realist art, likewise, played a key role in glorifying and legitimizing authoritarian Communist practices in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Consider how the global North, influenced by liberal-western values, visually depicts the rest of the world. Television and photographic portrayals of celebrity engagement with famine, for instance, tend to revolve around a patronising and view of Africa, depicted as a generic place of destitution, where innocent and powerless victims are in need of western help. Or so consider how a variety of seemingly mundane visual performances, from hairstyles to body movements, signal and normalise gendered systems of exclusion.

Fig 3: ‘Majority Rule (Bus),’ Michael Cook. 2014. With permission from the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer.

But just as images and visual artefacts entrench power relations they can also uproot them.  Michael Cook, whose photograph are featured here, challenges stereotypes and the colonial understanding of history associated with them. He visually reverses how colonial Australia has rendered the Indigenous population invisible.  Indigenous art has, indeed, a long history of exposing the undersides of Australia’s past and of advancing protest forms that eventually contribute to political and social change.

Creative Visions for Global Politics

Some scholars do, indeed, credit visual art in particular with the ability to challenge political narratives and push the boundaries of what can be seen, thought, and done in the realm of the political. Alex Danchev was one of these scholars.  He was one of the most prolific and influential contributors to debates on art and politics.   He wrote a chapter for our book, on “Witnessing.”  He died unexpectedly during the final stages of the book, which is dedicated to him.  I have offered a detailed appreciation of Alex’s legacy in the journal New Perspectives , but the key points for our purpose here is the following.

Danchev shows how the visual both traces our political past and opens up important opportunities for the future.  This is the case because the visual – in its various forms – is intrinsically linked to politics and ethics.

Art, in particular, can help us imagine the unimaginable.  In doing so it becomes a form of moral consciousness and an expression of political hope because it ruptures and transcends the language of habit that surrounds us and circumvents what is and is not politically visible, thinkable and possible.  Art plays such a powerful role precisely because it does neither try to visually represent the world as it is nor relies on familiar visual patterns.  The very power of art lies in stimulating our imagination by creating a distance between itself and the world

Artists, in this sense, serve as moral witnesses, Danchev stressed. They embark on visual adventures that makes us see the world anew, that “rubs it red raw.” They help us re-view, re-feel, and re-think politics in the most fundamental manner. Images, in this sense, make, unmake and remake politics. This is why Danchev believed that “contrary to popular belief, it is given to artists, not politicians, to create a new world order.”

Fig 4: ‘Majority Rule (Senate),’ Michael Cook. 2014. With permission from the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer.

Artists and the creative spirit they advance can, in this sense, also help us scholars understand the exceptionally complex role that images and visual artefacts play in global politics.  Although we live in a visual age, knowledge conventions – both in academia and in the wider realm – are by and large still revolving around texts and textual analysis.  The challenge ahead lies in gaining a fuller and more sophisticated understanding of the links between visuality and the political.  How do we assess the political implications of the visual phenomena that surround us?  What would it mean to communicate and think and act in visual ways?  How would the media, books, classrooms and other realms be transformed if we were to treat images not just as illustrations or as representations but as political forces themselves?  Numerous scholars have started to address these and other issues, but we have a long way to go until we understand and appreciate the power of images in global politics.

Further Reading on E-International Relations

• Recognition in Global Politics: The Challenge of Images and Technology
• Sensible Politics: Expanding from Visual IR to Multisensory Politics
• Spectacular Violence: Pellet Guns and the Sovereign Right to Maim in Kashmir
• Visualising the Drone: War Art as Embodied Resistance
• Devouring Brazilian Modernism: The Rise of Contemporary Indigenous Art
• Power and Development in Global Politics

Roland Bleiker  is Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, where he directs an interdisciplinary research program on Visual Politics. His work has explored the political role of aesthetics, visuality and emotions.  Recent books include Aesthetics and World Politics (Palgrave 2009/2012) and, as editor, Visual Global Politics (Routledge 2018).

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Home / Essay Samples / Literature / Rhetorical Question / Rhetorical Analysis: Power Of Images And Impacting On Human

Rhetorical Analysis: Power Of Images And Impacting On Human

• Category: Art , Literature
• Topic: Painting , Rhetorical Question

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Works Cited

• Mitchell, WJ Thomas. What do pictures want?: The lives and loves of images. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

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