Images in Use
Towards the critical analysis of visual communication
Editors
News coverage of EU negotiations, children’s war memories or TV series glamourising political processes – images pervade both private and public discourse, and visual communication plays a key role in our social negotiation of values. Conceptualising images as “images in use”, this volume considers the agencies behind visual communication and its impact on society.
Images in Use engages critically with traditional approaches to visual analysis, offers suggestions for alternative, socially situated analyses of images and demonstrates the explanatory force of thinking through “images in use” in a series of case studies. The conceptual contributions consider broader issues of critical theory, representation, as well as the mediatisation of politics. The case studies offer a survey of current visual communication including news coverage, political cartoons, political rhetoric, memory culture, celebrity humanitarianism, reality TV, as well as the narratives of blockbuster cinema and comics.
This volume proposes a new approach to visual communication, situating images in their social contexts and identifying the real, rhetorical and political impact of their use.
Images in Use engages critically with traditional approaches to visual analysis, offers suggestions for alternative, socially situated analyses of images and demonstrates the explanatory force of thinking through “images in use” in a series of case studies. The conceptual contributions consider broader issues of critical theory, representation, as well as the mediatisation of politics. The case studies offer a survey of current visual communication including news coverage, political cartoons, political rhetoric, memory culture, celebrity humanitarianism, reality TV, as well as the narratives of blockbuster cinema and comics.
This volume proposes a new approach to visual communication, situating images in their social contexts and identifying the real, rhetorical and political impact of their use.
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 44] 2011. vi, 298 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 10 October 2011
Published online on 10 October 2011
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
IntroductionMatteo Stocchetti and Karin Kukkonen | pp. 1–7
-
Part I. Approaches to visual communication and the question of power
-
Chapter 1. Images: Who gets what, when and how?Matteo Stocchetti | pp. 11–37
-
Chapter 2. The critical tradition in visual studies: An introductionJuha Herkman | pp. 39–53
-
Chapter 3. The map, the mirror and the simulacrum: Visual communication and the question of powerKarin Kukkonen | pp. 55–67
-
Chapter 4. Disenchantment with politics and the salience of imagesRuth Wodak | pp. 69–88
-
Part II. Case studies: Visual communication in late modern society
-
Chapter 5. Organising political consensus: The visual management of diplomatic negotiations and community relations in the Finnish accession to the EUAnne Koski | pp. 91–112
-
Chapter 6. Walls, doors and exciting encounters: Balkanism and its edges in Bulgarian political cartoons on European integrationAlina Curticapean | pp. 113–149
-
Chapter 7. The politics of visual representation: Security, the US and the ‘war on terrorism’Helle Palu | pp. 151–180
-
Chapter 8. The politics of identity and visuality: The case of Finnish war childrenAnna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen | pp. 181–198
-
Chapter 9. Visual politics and celebrity humanitarianism: How colonial culture is revitalised in the WestRiina Yrjölä | pp. 199–224
-
Chapter 10. The economics of gay reality television: The visualisation of sexual difference in contemporary consumer culturMarjo Kolehmainen and Katariina Mäkinen | pp. 225–243
-
Chapter 11. Mending endings: Power and closure in film plotsGerda Dullaart | pp. 245–267
-
Chapter 12. Representing the state of exception: Power, utopia, visuality and narrative in superhero comicsMervi Miettinen | pp. 269–290
-
Index | pp. 291–298
“The volume is an excellent resource for students, teachers and researchers planning to pursue work on multimodal analysis, since it covers a range of theoretical and methodological approaches in the study of images in discourse. The significance of this work is its strong coherent blend of studies in the area from a variety of perspectives and settings. Specifically, the underlying theme of elucidating the political dimensions of analysing images considering socio-cultural factors imparts valuable insights for future investigations.”
Paolo Nino Valdez, De La Salle University, in Discourse Studies, Vol. 15:6 (2013), pag. 786-787
Cited by (12)
Cited by 12 other publications
Caiani, Manuela
2024. Visual Analysis and the Contentious Politics of the Radical Right. Sociology Compass 18:9 
Kaser, Karl
2021. Introduction. In Femininities and Masculinities in the Digital Age, ► pp. 1 ff.
Kowalski, Grzegorz
2021. Patterns of Discourse Organization in Multimodal Discourse of Crowdfunding Project Presentations. In Multimodality, Digitalization and Cognitivity in Communication and Pedagogy [Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, 20], ► pp. 9 ff.
Massari, Alice
2021. Threatening – The Refugee as a Threat. In Visual Securitization [IMISCOE Research Series, ], ► pp. 103 ff.
Чернявская, Валерия Евгеньевна
2021. IMAGE AND VISUALITY IN SOCIOCULTURAL DIMENSION. ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics :2(28) ► pp. 96 ff.
White, Kristopher D.
2019. Visualizing the Languages of Nature, Society, Power, and Politics in Contemporary Kazakhstan. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
White, Kristopher D.
2020. Visualizing the Languages of Nature, Society, Power, and Politics in Contemporary Kazakhstan. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 3209 ff.
Wintzer, Jeannine
2019. The Visualization of Migration. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18
Reddy-Best, Kelly L., Laura Kane, Jennifer Harmon & Nika R. Gagliardi
2018. Critical perspectives on fashion textbooks: representations of race, gender, and body. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education 11:1 ► pp. 63 ff.
Osei-Kofi, Nana & Lisette E. Torres
2015. College admissions viewbooks and the grammar of gender, race, and STEM. Cultural Studies of Science Education 10:2 ► pp. 527 ff.
Teplá, Jana
2014. IDEOLOGICAL STATUS OF VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF POLITICS: ANALYSIS OF CZECH ONLINE NEWS PHOTOGRAPHS / VIZUALIOJO POLITIKOS REPREZENTAVIMO IDEOLOGINIS STATUSAS: ČEKIJOS NAUJIENŲ NUOTRAUKŲ, PASKELBTŲ INTERNETE, ANALIZĖ. CREATIVITY STUDIES 7:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
Teplá, Jana
2020. NON-RATIONAL ASPECTS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC MEANING. photographies 13:2 ► pp. 219 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Communication Studies
Main BIC Subject
JFD: Media studies
Main BISAC Subject
LAN004000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies