Abstract
We live in a visual age and images shape our everyday life of the world, but images also play a key role in global politics. With the continuous upgrading of network technology, the increasing use of social media further amplifies the significance of links between the visual and the political sphere be it in the context of democratic elections, political campaigns, hegemony and resistance movements, or populist communication. There has been an increasing debate on visual politics around the world, but mostly in the context of North America and Europe, while the scholarship of the Global South has been relatively undeveloped. Visual Politics in the Global South explores the significance of the visual as a tool of political communication in the Global South from a holistic lens, provides a comprehensive overview of visual politics by exploring the interconnected aspects of media users, and makes an innovative and distinctive contribution to political and visual communication studies.
The highlights of this book are its rich content and, to some extent, its challenge to dominant visual politics and the colonial power of the West. On the one hand, the volume provides a rich and diverse set of case studies on the politics of social media from a variety of perspectives. Focusing on Andrés Manuel López Obrador's populist communication on Facebook, Juárez-Gámiz and Celecia Pérez present categories and styles of populist leaders and highlight Andrés Manuel López Obrador's charismatic and philanthropic qualities as President of Mexico (Chapter 5). Still with a focus on Mexico, Nasheli Jiménez del Val explores how the presidential residence Los Pinos served as a landmark building for Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN, president of Mexico, 2012–2018) and as a visible symbol for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, president of Mexico, 2018–present) (Chapter 6). Focusing on photographs of Indians in Brazil, Jefferson Virgílio illustrates how the government of Brazil constructed the Indian image as wild, fierce, and violent through photographs of Indians of the Laklãnõ. He also explores how Indians of the Laklãnõ use these photographs to reveal the violence, neglect, and exploitation of the national state of Brazil (Chapter 14). In another case study focusing on elections in West Bengal, Banerjee examines how women present themselves on social media in India, interrogating how the visual political communication of women transgresses the boundaries between politics and individuals (Chapter 3).
The book also shows that the dissemination and consumption of visual politics in the Global South are still powerfully shaped by geopolitics and power dynamics in which the Global North dominates the South. Although visual decolonization is neither easy nor straightforward, this volume challenges visual theory and practices that uphold the prevailing Western discourses and colonial legacies. Thus, Veneti and Rovisco argue for epistemologies of the South's struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, attempting to open up political and epistemological diversity in studies of Visual Politics in the Global South (Chapter 1). Based on the appropriation of the capucha, Marina Avia Estrada explores how the balaclava has become an effective performative object to challenge neoliberal politics in Chile and a symbol for the feminist activist of the Global South (Chapter 9). Drawing on extractivism in Argentina, namely the massive extraction and exploitation of natural resources in an indiscriminate manner without reinvesting in looted lands and communities that provide labour, Serafini delves into how extractivism is sustained by a visual regime and how artists expose the effects of extractivism on humans and ecosystems, challenging the extractivist development paradigm and the notion of perpetual growth that separates humans from nature (Chapter 11). In a similar vein, Baroni and Mayr explore photojournalistic images during the mass protests in Brazil's cities in 2013, and analyze how dominant visual strategies satisfy mainstream news values and marginalise the protest movement (Chapter 12).
Another strength of the book is the use of a range of methods and methodological approaches. Thus, focusing on a campaign against gender inequality in Lebanon, Riskedahl uses visual analysis to explore how the multimodal engagement of the campaign generated momentum for activism, and further goes into the dynamics of active language reform and its effects on Lebanese society (Chapter 2). Another method used by Yu Xiang in chapter 4 is discourse analysis. Xiang shows how discourses of hegemony and resistance are achieved from recontextualization based on 16 cartoons and other artistic expressions of heroic figures of Li Mingliang and Zhong Nanshan on social media in China. The main method used in chapters 6 and 7 is semiotic analysis. Matus and Echeverría examine the television advertising campaigns for the constitutional plebiscite of 2020 in Chile and analyze campaign videos to describe figurative schemas (Chapter 7). Finally, the remaining chapters adopt a cultural signification approach. By using the cultural signification approach, Mensah, Tayman, and Musah discuss the formats and significance of signs in election campaigns in Ghana, and probe into how political parties use formalized symbols to communicate competence, dominance, social appeal, power, and bravery (Chapter 8).
In conclusion, this volume examines visual politics through theoretically driven and empirically grounded case studies in the context of Global South. It analyzes the importance of visual politics including political campaigns such as the Gaza war (Chapter 13), the relationship between state and citizens (Chapter 10), and public and daily politics. However, the differences and similarities of visual politics between the Global South and the Global North need further study, as it will also be important to explore how visual politics interplay with cultural tradition, media technology, state power, and so on. Nevertheless, it examines multiple aspects of visual politics, visual stereotypes, and power relations across the Global South from various disciplinary lenses. This approach will be helpful in synthesizing the theoretical and empirical investigations. Thus, it is a unique, timely, and valuable resource not only for students, researchers, and political leaders in the field of visual politics, but also for those who are interested in the interaction between media communication and discourses of power.