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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. Taking Images Seriously, How to Analyze Them?

Authors : Corentin Cohen, Frédéric Ramel

Published in: Resources and Applied Methods in International Relations

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The democratization of digital technologies and the proliferation of pictures and videos have forced researchers to adopt new frameworks to study how societies and media take part in international politics. This chapter shows how images can be taken into account in political science and international relations analysis. To do so it presents various methodologies and concepts that can be used individually or together and details different approaches. It firstly looks at why and how to build up corpuses of images dealing with traditional questions of political science. It then shows how a researcher can deal with the question and the policies behind the production of images. The core of the analysis focuses on the issue of how to analyze images themselves, using aesthetics and visual concepts in political analysis. Finally, the chapter deals with the questions of the circulation and reception of these images.

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Footnotes
2
Martin Gurri, Craig Denny and Aaron Harms, “Our Visual Persuasion Gap”, U. S. Army War College, 40(1) (Spring 2010): 101–109.
 
3
Jean-Paul Terrenoire, “Images et sciences sociales: l’objet et l’outil,” Revue française de sociologie, 26(3) (1985): 509–527.
 
4
Le Guide de l’enquête globale en sciences sociales (Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2015), is no exception to this rule, and doesn’t have a chapter devoted to this aspect. A short footnote (p. 9) refers to an article by Dominique Marchetti, but it pertains to the information market and doesn’t specify the methodological tools relating to the treatment of visual objects.
 
5
“Mental” images or perceptions have long been perceived through the work of Kenneth E. Boulding, Robert Jervis and Richard K. Herrmann, but their work doesn’t grasp the strictly visual dimension.
 
6
See Nadine Lavand’s introduction, Montrer et Démontrer (Paris: Delagrave, 2008).
 
7
See MOMA in New York regarding his work (www.​moma.​org/).
 
8
Several software programs show if an image has been retouched: Tungstène and Photoshop, but also JPEGsnoop and online tools such as FotoForensics and izitru.​com.
 
9
On the link between images (pictures), mental images and political ideology, see William J. T. Mitchell’s pivotal book, Iconology: Image, text, ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
 
10
Roland Bleiker, “Image, Method, Text: A Pluralist Framework for Visual Global Politics,” Millennium. Journal of International Studies, 43(3) (June 2015): 872–890.
 
11
Kevin C. Dunn, “Historical Representations,” in Audie Klotz and Deepa Prakash (eds), Qualitative Methods in International Relations, A Pluralist Guide (New York (N. Y.): Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
 
12
Quentin Skinner, Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The Artist as Political Philosopher, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1983.
 
13
Barbara Saden, Punir la Syrie… La punition en relations internationales, Master’s 2 thesis (unpublished), Paris, Sciences Po Paris, 2014.
 
14
For a presentation of visual sociology, readers may refer to Fabio La Rocca, “Introduction à la sociologie visuelle,” Sociétés, 1(95) (2007): 33–40.
 
15
Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
 
16
Howard S. Becker, Telling About Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
 
17
Corentin Cohen, Une interprétation par ses images du conflit de 2006 entre le Hezbollah et Israël, Master’s 2 thesis (unpublished), Paris, Sciences Po Paris, 2013.
 
18
Déborah Guy, De la construction d’une icône. Histoire socio-organisationnelle d’une image, Master’s 2 thesis (unpublished), Paris, Sciences Po Paris, 2011.
 
19
For more details about the debate and its interpretation, see Axel Hech and Gabi Schlag, “Securitizing Images: The Female Body and the War in Afghanistan,” European Journal of International Relations, 19 (2013): 891.
 
20
Dominique Chateau, “L’analyse du message audiovisuel de communication: quelques problèmes de méthode et de pédagogie,” Études de communication, 9 (1987) (available at http://​edc.​revues.​org/​2977, accessed April 20, 2017).
 
21
Kinda Chaib, “Le Hezbollah libanais à travers ses images: la représentation du martyr,” in Sabrina Mervin (dir.), Les Mondes chiites et l’Iran, Paris, Karthala, Beirut, IFPO, 2007.
 
22
Roland Bleiker, Aesthetics and World Politics (New York (N. Y.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
 
23
Elodie Apard, “Boko Haram, le jihad en vidéo,” Politique africaine, 138 (2015/2): 145.
 
24
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York, Hill and Wang, 2010), pp. 25–27. Roland Barthes distinguishes between “gazes” of two kinds: the studium and the punctum. “It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes […] The second element will break (or punctuate) the studium. […] This time it is not I who seek it out (as I invest the field of the studium with my sovereign consciousness), it is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow and pierces me. […] A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me),” (pp. 26–27)
 
25
Michael J. Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics (New York (N. Y.), Routledge, 2009), p. 19. He considers that these ties are the aesthetic patrimony of an image which he defines thus: “[…] the legacy of its form and implications from earlier images in similar medias. To pursue that legacy is to provide a comparative frame that helps to isolate what is singular about the context of the current image.”
 
26
Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the organization of experience, Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1986. For an overview of the literature, Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology, 26 (2000): 611–639.
 
27
Robert M. Entman, “Framing U. S. Coverage of International News: Contrasts in Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents,” Journal of Communication, 41(4) (1991): 6–27.
 
28
Shahira Fahmy, “Contrasting Visual Frames of our Times: A Framing Analysis of English—and Arabic–Language Press Coverage of War and Terrorism,” International Communication Gazette, 72 (2010): 695.
 
29
Roland Bleiker, David Campbell, Emma Hutchinson and Xzarina Nicholson, “The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees,” Australian Journal of Political Science, 48(4) (2013): 398–416.
 
30
The front page of The Australian, October 14, 2009 is reproduced in Bleiker, Campbell, Hutchinson and Nicholson, “The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees”: 409.
 
31
David D. Perlmutter, Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises (London, Praeger, 1998).
 
32
Celebrity, prominence, frequency, profit, immediacy, transferability, the subject’s importance, the event’s importance, the metonymical aspect, cultural resonance or striking composition.
 
33
Howard S. Becker, Telling About Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
 
34
Bruno Latour, “What is Iconoclash? Or is there a world beyond the image-wars?,” in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds), Iconoclash, Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art (Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2002), pp. 14–40.
 
35
See Joana Margueritte Giecewicz, Icons of War? The Visual Representation of War in International Photojournalism Competitions, Master’s 2 thesis (unpublished), Paris, Sciences Po Paris, 2010, which looks at how photojournalism contests participate in the dissemination of international norms.
 
36
BBC News, Kim Ghattas, “Lebanon War Image Causes Controversy,” at http://​news.​bbc.​co.​uk/​2/​hi/​middle_​east/​6385969.​stm, accessed April 20, 2017.
 
37
Clément Cheroux, Diplopie. L’image photographique à l’ère des médias globalisés: essai sur le 11 Septembre 2001 (Cherbourg: Le Point du jour, 2009).
 
38
Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (New York (N. Y.), Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997).
 
39
Xavier Crettiez and Pierre Piazza, “Sociologie d’une conversation silencieuse,” Cultures et Conflits, (91–92) (Autumn/Winter 2013): 101–121.
 
40
Michael F. Davie, “Les marqueurs de territoires idéologiques à Beyrouth (1975–1990),” L’Affiche urbaine, 1992, Ndeg.2, p. 29 (available at http://​almashriq.​hiof.​no/​lebanon/​ accessed April 20, 2017).
 
41
Shahira Fahmy and Wayne Wanta, “What Visual Journalists Think Others Think? The Perceived Impact of News Photographs on Public Opinion Formation,” Visual Communication Quarterly, 14(1) (2007): 16–31.
 
42
Christopher J. McKinley and Shahira Fahmy, “Passing the “Breakfast Test”: Exploring the Effects of Varying Degrees of Graphicness of War Photography in the New Media Environment,” Visual Communication Quarterly, 18(2) (2011): 70–83.
 
43
Rosemarie I. Dinklage and Robert C. Ziller, “Explicating Cognitive Conflict through Photo-communication, the Meaning of War and Peace in Germany and the United States,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33(2) (1989): 309–317.
 
44
Delia Dumitrescu, Elisabeth Gidengil and Dietlind Stolle, “Candidate Confidence and Electoral Appeal: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Nonverbal Confidence on Voter Evaluations,” Political Science Research and Methods, 3(1) (2014): 45–52.
 
45
 
Literature
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go back to reference Bleiker, Roland. 2015. Image, Method, Text: A Pluralist Framework for Visual Global Politics. Millennium. Journal of International Studies 43 (3): 872–890.CrossRef Bleiker, Roland. 2015. Image, Method, Text: A Pluralist Framework for Visual Global Politics. Millennium. Journal of International Studies 43 (3): 872–890.CrossRef
go back to reference Coleman, Renita. 2010. Framing the Pictures in Our Heads. Exploring the Framing and Agenda-Setting Effects of Visual Images. In Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers, 233–261. New York: Routledge. Coleman, Renita. 2010. Framing the Pictures in Our Heads. Exploring the Framing and Agenda-Setting Effects of Visual Images. In Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers, 233–261. New York: Routledge.
go back to reference Crettiez, Xavier, and Pierre Piazza. 2013. Sociologie d’une conversation silencieuse. Cultures et Conflits 91–92 (Fall/Winter): 101–121.CrossRef Crettiez, Xavier, and Pierre Piazza. 2013. Sociologie d’une conversation silencieuse. Cultures et Conflits 91–92 (Fall/Winter): 101–121.CrossRef
go back to reference Goffman, Erving. 1986. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1986. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
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Metadata
Title
Taking Images Seriously, How to Analyze Them?
Authors
Corentin Cohen
Frédéric Ramel
Copyright Year
2018
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61979-8_4