Workshop

Visual Aspects of Political Communication and Digital Platforms

November 26–27, 2024

Rudolf Wolf Room, Collegium Helveticum

Organized by

Jakob Ohme
Senior Fellow 2024–2025

Informations

Venue & accessibility info: Rudolf Wolf Room, Collegium Helveticum

The workshop is followed by a small reception.

In the current milieu of political discourse, digital platforms have fundamentally altered the modalities of political communication, thereby influencing the construction, perception, and dissemination of political messages. Visual content on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok has increasingly become central to political messaging, significantly impacting public opinion and electoral behaviors.

The workshop is designed as a two-part event, spanning two half-days and blending presentations with panel discussions to foster a dynamic interdisciplinary forum focused on exploring the evolving challenges and opportunities within this field. The workshop will include scholars from multiple fields, such as political science, communication science, and computational social sciences, who will outline the current landscape and the importance of visual political communication in contemporary political spheres.

Program
November 26

13:00	Opening & welcome remarks Sebastian Bonhoeffer Collegium Helveticum
13:15	Visual Velocity Politics in the Age of Video News Franziska Marquart University of Copenhagen, DK
14:15	Theoretical Approaches to Visual News Content Session 1 Discussion on current and emerging innovative theoretical frameworks that can effectively support the study of how visual elements impact political communication.
	Challenges and Opportunities of Visually Conveying Journalistic News Standards on Social Media Anna-Theresa Mayer Weizenbaum Institute, DE
	Visual Politics: Proximity, Paradox, and the Illusion of Engagement Jakob Ohme Collegium Helveticum & University of Zurich, CH
15:45	Coffee break
16:30	Gathering and Analyzing Visual Platform Data Session 2 Exploration and development of strategies to overcome the challenges associated with accessing and analyzing extensive visual data across various digital platforms.
	Longitudinal Digital Trace Data and Sequence Modeling to Enhance Visual Trace Data Analysis Yangliu Fan Weizenbaum Institute, DE
	Automated Content Classification of TikTok Videos Challenges and Solutions Lion Wedel University of Zurich, CH
18:00	Closing remarks

Program
November 27

09:00	Empirical Insights to Visual Platform Communication Session 3 Gathering insights into novel methodological approaches, including multimodal classification techniques, to advance the analysis of multimodal content, with a particular emphasis on visual and video data.
	Climate Change Denial Images from Telegram, X, and Reddit Kilian Buehling Freie Universität Berlin, DE Meg Jing Zeng University of Zurich, CH
	Hard Visual Propaganda Karsten Donnay University of Zurich, CH
	Are Individual Pathways of Engagement with Political Content on TikTok a Supply or Demand Issue? Felix Gaisbauer Weizenbaum Institute, DE
10:30	Coffee break
11:00	The Power of Visual Communication Roundtable Denise Bertschi Collegium Helveticum, CH Ana Godinho CERN, CH Cara Specker Bilanz Magazin, CH
12:00–12:30	Closing remarks Jakob Ohme Collegium Helveticum /University of Zurich, CH