CFP: Special Issue- Visual Political Communication in Africa’s Digital Sphere.
The importance of visuals in communication is never in doubt. Our contemporary world is largely mediated by visuals. Given the proliferation of visuals as a medium of communication, societies are increasingly creating “image junkies” which has led to “the most irresistible form of mental pollution” (Sontag 2003, 24). While Sontag raised such arguments two decades ago, technological developments and the coming in of different social media platforms has further enhanced the use of different forms of visuals in communication. Such an observation led to Schill (2012, 120) to call for an “urgent need for more research, both theoretical and applied, that examines the functions of visual symbols in political contexts”. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the intersection of visuals and political communication (Lilleker and Veneti 2023; Veneti et al. 2019), this research field has remained “one of the least studied and least understood areas” (Schill 2012, 119). Unfortunately, most of this interest is coming from the Global North unlike in the Global South where the state and art of political communication is yet to fully develop. For example, many politicians in the Global South, in particular Africa, are yet to have enough budgets to hire political campaign strategists to handle their political campaigns.