This exploratory work proposes a multi modal methoda fusion of prior approaches informed by linguistics, visual communication, and other disciplinesfor descriptive online content analysis. Simultaneously capturing visual and textual elements (and the relationships between them) is a promising development.
Patrick Meirick, University of Oklahoma
Provides an interesting and comprehensive exploration of political communication as it evolves in concert with advances in communication technologies. This is an excellent volume for scholars interested in keeping apace of the current state and possible future of global political communication.
Brian Houston, University of Missouri
Political Communication Online
The impact of the Internet on political communication has been significant and multifaceted: it has expanded the reach of political messages, opened the floodgates of decontextualization and intercultural misunderstanding, made room for new genres and forms, and allowed for the incorporation of every previously existing communication mode into complex, multilayered documents.
Political Communication Online places these developments in their social and media contexts, covers various disciplinary backgrounds and how they can contribute to a common understanding of the evolving online media landscape, and proposes a novel methodological tool for the analysis of political communication online. Ognyan Seizov offers an approach that places context at the core of the theoretical and methodological discussion, by discussing the traits of online communication that make it a unique communication environment. The book then brings together different disciplines that have important contributions for the study of political communication online, but which have not been integrated for this purpose so far, such as visual communication, multimodal research, and cognitive psychology. Seizov introduces the books main theoretical and methodological contribution to multimodal document analysis, the annotation scheme Imagery and Communication in Online Narratives (ICON), and explores how the ICON approach works in practice. Taking four distinct genres of online political communication news, election campaigns, NGOs, and social movementsthe book presents the analyses of convenience samples from each genre in detail.
This text features a comprehensive theoretical discussion of vital current developments in online political communication, places these developments in context, and couples that with a practical demonstration of the novel methodology it proposes.
Ognyan Seizov is currently a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Center Visual Communication & Expertise at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. His research interests include multimodal and online communication, new media, political and social campaigning, document analysis, and mixed-method media research.
Routledge Research in Political Communication
1 Political Campaigning in Referendums
Framing the Referendum Issue
Claes H. de Vreese and Holli A. Semetko
2 The Internet and National Elections
A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning
Edited by Nicholas W. Jankowski, Randolph Kluver, Kirsten A. Foot, and Steven M. Schneider
3 Global Political Marketing
Edited by Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Jesper Strmbck, and Chris Rudd
4 Political Campaigning, Elections and the Internet
Comparing the US, UK, Germany and France
Darren G. Lilleker and Nigel A. Jackson
5 Public Broadcasting and Political Interference
Chris Hanretty
6 Social Media and Democracy
Innovations in Participatory Politics
Brian Loader and Daniel Mercea
7 Political Leadership, Nations and Charisma
Vivian Ibrahim and Margit Wunsch
8 The Media, Political Participation and Empowerment
Edited by Richard Scullion, Roman Gerodimos, Daniel Jackson, and Darren Lilleker
9 Digital World: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights
Edited by Gillian Youngs
10 Political Marketing
Strategic Campaign Culture
Edited by Kostas Gouliamos, Antonis Theocharous, Bruce Newman, Stephan Henneberg
11 Politics and the Internet in Comparative Context
Views From the Cloud
Edited by Paul G. Nixon, Rajash Rawal, and Dan Mercea
12 Political Communication Online
Structures, Functions, and Challenges
Ognyan Seizov
First published 2014
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Ognyan Seizov to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Seizov, Ognyan.
Political communication online : structures, functions, and challenges /
Ognyan Seizov.
pages cm. (Routledge research in political communication ; 12)
1. Communication in politicsComputer network resources.
2. Communication in politicsTechnological innovations. 3. Internet
in public administration. I. Title.
JA85.S46 2014
320.014dc23
2013046244
ISBN: 978-0-415-73738-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-81806-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
The origins of this monograph are in the eponymous doctoral dissertation I completed at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, in early 2013. It started out as a purely visual project: a comparison of visual styles in presidential campaigning around the globe. Then I discovered the exciting world of multimodal research, and I realized analyzing images alone would not do. Always a fan of the written word, I chose to pair visuals and text. Luckily for me, there was a lot of research in linguistics that also considered visuals; in fact, it considered everything on the page as part of the text. But I was not quite happy with that either. My heart was still stuck on the visual as being a major bearer of meaning. As a result, I decided to cross the best of both worlds and come up with a new analytical construct that would cover images and texts with equal, or at least similar, diligence. Four years down the road, the project is completed, and you are holding its latest and most thorough incarnation in your hands right now.
Synthesis often produces a precipitate; combining different theories and methods does not make a clean solution. Purists from visual studies or applied linguistics will be quick to spot some shortcuts and freedoms I have allowed myself in creating the synergetic annotation framework, which is it at the heart of this volume. Just as the precipitate is an important and useful product of many chemical reactions, these sharper theoretical corners are a welcome part of the creative scientific process. They invite comments, revisions, and reinventionsand so they take us further down the collaborative path.
