Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.
Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”
Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.
Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”
Monday 31 July – Friday 4 August 2023
Minimum 2 hours of live teaching per day
09:30 – 12:30 CEST
This course offers an interactive online learning environment using advanced pedagogical tools, and is specifically designed for advanced students, researchers, and professional analysts. The course is limited to a maximum of 16 participants, ensuring that the teaching team can address the unique needs of each individual.
To provide an in-depth introduction to the theory, methods, and application of visual communication analysis in politics. You'll learn relevant concepts for studying visual politics, followed by different approaches to sampling and visual analysis at the descriptive level. The course covers the use of visuals in inferential and interpretive study designs, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Gain a developed understanding of:
4 credits - Engage fully in class activities and complete a post-class assignment
Erik P. Bucy is Regents Professor of Strategic Communication at Texas Tech University, where he teaches and conducts research on visual politics, nonverbal communication, and public opinion about the press.
He is the co-author of Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (with Maria Elizabeth Grabe) and is widely known for his studies on the influence of visuals in news and politics.
Although highly memorable and persuasive, visuals are the overlooked element of media and communication in political analysis. This in-depth introduction to visual analysis will allow you to see the relevance of visual and nonverbal communication in your own work, and pave the way to understanding and integrating specifying multimodal study designs.
You will review relevant concepts and theories that inform visuals analysis. These include framing, priming, and information processing; and, on the nonverbal side, emotional appropriateness, expectancy violation theory, and social dominance. You will discuss the relevance of visual literacy and evolutionary theory.
Beginning with two analytical challenges: identify visual frames in different sets of images and coding patterns of nonverbal behaviour in video footage of leaders. Review coding approaches for each data type (visual frames and nonverbal behaviour) and introduce quality control practices, such as variable definitions, codebook development, and intercoder reliability.
Examine qualitative research, derived from open-ended responses to visual frames, across several different policy contexts, including environmental issues, attitudes towards refugees, and public health misinformation. You will discuss techniques for performing theme analysis of qualitative data.
Moving to quantitative research based on visual data, first showing how to use visual variables as outcomes in descriptive content analyses. You will learn how to repurpose the same data as predictors in inferential study designs, including experimental and time series models.
Turning to the future of visual politics research, exploring the possibilities of computational techniques capable of parsing both still images and video. A brief review of the field identifies relevant conferences, journals and other outlets for work in visual politics.
The course combines asynchronous pre-class assignments, such as readings, as well as live daily two-hour sessions via a conferencing platform with lectures, PowerPoint presentations, and student questions-and-answers. To gain the most from this course, read the assigned articles in advance of each class, and practice coding techniques and other modes of analysis after they are introduced each day.
You will need a basic understanding of content analysis and social scientific methods, including surveys, experiments, and focus groups. Preparation for the course requires 5–10 hours of assigned reading.
Each course includes pre-course assignments, including readings and pre-recorded videos, as well as daily live lectures totalling at least two and a half hours. The instructor will conduct live Q&A sessions and offer designated office hours for one-to-one consultations.
Please check your course format before registering.
Live classes will be held daily for two and half hours on a video meeting platform, allowing you to interact with both the instructor and other participants in real-time. To avoid online fatigue, the course employs a pedagogy that includes small-group work, short and focused tasks, as well as troubleshooting exercises that utilise a variety of online applications to facilitate collaboration and engagement with the course content.
This course description may be subject to subsequent adaptations (e.g. taking into account new developments in the field, participant demands, group size, etc.). Registered participants will be informed at the time of change.
By registering for this course, you confirm that you possess the knowledge required to follow it. The instructor will not teach these prerequisite items. If in doubt, please contact us before registering.