Dear colleagues,
The Journal of Visual Political Communication is pleased to share its latest issue (Volume 12, Issue 1), bringing together four original research articles and one book review that examine how visuals shape political meaning, participation, and power across media, platforms, and contexts.
Shifting shadows: A visual analysis of the representation of older individuals in German media amidst the pandemic - Janica Ezzeldien
Explores how German media visually represented older individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing how crisis imagery shaped public understandings of age, vulnerability, and political belonging.
Transindustrialization: Art, Regeneration and Cultural Inequalities - Darren Lilleker & Maike Dinger
Examines how art and cultural regeneration are inherently political, demonstrating how visibility, commemoration, and exclusion in post-industrial spaces reflect and reproduce cultural inequalities.
Visual Attention to Mobilizing Political Social Media Posts - Anna Gaul et al.
Uses eye-tracking experiments with Instagram posts to investigate what captures users' attention in mobilizing political messages and how visual cues relate to political participation.
Demolishing democracy: A comparative visual framing analysis - Marina Petric
Offers a comparative visual framing analysis of the US Capitol insurrection and Brazil's 8 January attacks, showing how iconic images shape narratives of democracy, violence, and political legitimacy.
Book Review
Visual Citizenship: Communicating Political Opinions and Emotions on Social Media (Catherine Bouko, 2024), reviewed by Darren Lilleker, examining how visual expression on social media reshapes political voice and civic engagement.
Best wishes
Dechun Zhang
JVPC Social Media Editor
(on behalf of the JVPC Editorial Board)