The Visual Communication Practices of Political Parties in Europe

The third presentation in this ECREA 2022 session is by Uta Rußmann, and examined the Facebook pages of political parties in the 2019 European elections. It focusses especially on the visual practices of such pages. User engagement with such content can shape political discourse, as it affects the visibility of the content on Facebook due to the platform’s algorithmic logics; parties actively adjust their social media practices to generate such engagement, of course. Negative statements, humour, personalised content, and populist statements are all seen as increasing engagement – as is multimedia content.

Visual forms are strongly connected with everyday political discussions, and these forms being people together in their online interactions. They are important when it comes to meaning-making, expressing political identity and affiliation or antagonism. But what visual elements are most effective here? Which produce the greatest level of engagement?

The present study examined 12 EU countries, representing 82% of the population; it captured the posts by political parties’ pages that contained audiovisual elements during the month before the EU election day in each country. It found that photographs and collages yielded the most reactions, live videos produced the most comments, and recorded videos received the most shares. Also, patriotic symbols produced more engagement of all three types; landmarks generated the least; selfies and images of persons were less shared; environmental backgrounds received more shares; and everyday situations produced no significantly unusual engagement.