Band 3, Heft 1 - Themed Issue: Online Media and Image Studies Under Conflicts

Study purpose The study analyzed online editorial cartoons depicting the Israel-Palestine conflict through visual, symbolic, metaphorical, and textual analysis. The study reveals a prevailing anti-war sentiment across editorial cartoons, with a notable inclination towards supporting Palestine. This support was prominent in cartoons originating from the Global South, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there was a scarcity of such cartoons within mainstream Western media. Methodology The study employs an in-depth approach, analyzing cartoons from both Western and non-Western media. It utilizes Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) and Multimodal Semiotics (MS) theories, focusing on symbolism and text to decode nuanced narratives within the cartoons. Main findings The cartoons depict complex narratives, using symbolism to explain how politicians and the main media are framing specific entities while undermining victimology. They reveal subjective perspectives that influence audience perceptions. They echo existing scholarly views on the influential power of editorial cartoons in communicating complex political concepts. Social implications The cartoons shape public understanding of the conflict, potentially influencing biases and perspectives. They present Hamas as both an aggressor and a victim, portraying multifaceted perceptions of the group. Practical implications The findings are instrumental in depicting political identities, including major organizations like the UN. The boldness in depicting such entities provides a practical avenue for understanding the role of such organizations. Originality/value The study adds to the existing literature by applying multimodal analysis to editorial cartoons, unveiling hidden narratives and perceptions. It suggests the need for a deeper analysis of the conflict’s historical, geopolitical, and power structures. This research offers a multifaceted understanding of how editorial cartoons shape perceptions and interpretations of the Israel-Palestine conflict, emphasizing their complex and influential nature within media discourse.

Purpose This study explores an under-researched area: NGOs’ efforts to provide humanitarian relief during armed conflict. It examines visuals posted on the Instagram accounts of 14 NGOs whose mission is to support civilians impacted by the Gaza humanitarian crisis. Design/methodology/approach This preliminary, pilot study employs critical-cultural and rhetorical methodological approaches of textual analysis and visual rhetoric to analyze Instagram posts ( n  = 3,014) of 14 NGOs posted during the first 90 days of the crisis. Findings NGOs’ strategic communication through their Instagram accounts is situated in three key attributes: appeals to credibility, affect, and solidarity to appeal to stakeholders needed to enact advocative and relief efforts. NGOs frequently used a combination of these attributes, sometimes highlighting all three in a single image. The blending of appeals in this manner can help NGOs dislodge or construct messages that resist restriction by and within existing strategic narratives. The dataset evokes a pattern of intentional deliberative rhetoric tempered by some forensic tendencies within three motivating appeals: appeals to credibility, affect appeals, and appeals to solidarity. Practical implications Given this is one of the first studies on the humanitarian crisis, this study provides important understanding of it and how NGOs are responded to it. Social implications This study enhances understanding of the potential influence of NGOs’ strategic communication and potential for social media to produce a critically engaged perspective on conflict and humanitarian crises with international audiences. Originality/value This study gives a valuable insight into the Instagram posting practices of NGOs’ advocacy and humanitarian relief efforts, and to understand the challenges and, literal and figurative, roadblocks to conduct those efforts. Given the recency of the data set, this originality of the study is clear. It is likely the first study of its kind that analyzes NGOs’ strategic communication during the current humanitarian crisis. The study is of value to researchers in a wide range of interdisciplinary range from media and communication studies to political science to crisis management, and to strategic communication professionals, including NGO administration and volunteers, those conducting online content creation, social media campaign management, particularly for the crisis relief and management.

Purpose This paper analyzes memes posted by @Ukraine to X, formerly known as Twitter, from the account’s inception in 2016 through September 2023 to examine the function and utility of memes as tools of propaganda in global conflict. Methods A multimodal discourse analysis of more than 100 memes was conducted by a small research group to separate the memes into thematic categories in an exploratory fashion. Then, a small subset of the research group conducted a recursive analysis on the images and text in a handful of memes selected purposively to determine what types of ideological appeals were present. Results Our findings align with observations made in previous studies that internet memes might be used to bolster national unity and might be employed to bolster pleas for sympathy from wealthy, more powerful allies, in this case in the West. The essential propaganda ideals were those of democracy, friendship, and independence on the side of Ukraine while Russia is framed as a dictatorship. Practical Implications A small number of the memes referenced in our paper garnered global media attention. Though we do not make any claims about broad media effects relating to the memes studied here, garnering the attention of major U.S. publication seems clearly to have been a goal of some of these memes. For those who wish to find a key to the playbook for a nation’s propaganda strategy, its social media memes are a great place to begin. Social Implications It is apparent in this study that governments might use memes to cover all their propaganda bases, so to speak. Ukraine’s memes appear to serve mainly to reinforce messages of national unity and messages of connection with the West. Originality Though others have studied @Ukraine’s tweets, this is believed to be the first to focus exclusively on memes posted to the feed. This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how wildly varied memes can communicate core concepts of a propaganda strategy, perhaps with the hope that a few will “hit” with desired media outlets, if only to bolster propaganda efforts.

Purpose This paper aims to analyze how vloggers use interactions of different modalities in transnational travel vlogs on YouTube to draw audiences’ attentions, as well as the impact of the socio-cultural context on the discourse of these vlogs and the represented city images. Design/methodology/approach This research project adopts a multimodal approach by using a new analytical framework based on provenance symbols in semiotics, appraisal systems, and visual grammar in linguistics as theoretical foundations. Findings Our research findings show that there are four dominant themes, including nature enjoyment, landmark visiting and street wandering, food tasting, and infrastructure evaluation in these vlogs. North American full-time vloggers with advanced skills and rich experience are the main contributors, which may lead to a fixed and biased representation of city images. The mechanism of city image formation, from cities’ physical existence to foreign viewers’ perception via transnational travel vlogs, has also been illustrated. Implications The city image exists in a dynamic landscape where online opinion leaders also hold significant discourse power. Though becoming more visible, cities are facing challenges related to the increasing homogenization of mediated images. The research findings also have practical implications for redefining approaches to the international communication of city images to diverse stakeholders including city administrators and travel vloggers. Originality/value This paper expands the scope of research on urban communication by adopting a comparative and global perspective. The new analytical framework can serve as a reference for future studies on new media content. Furthermore, the systematic mechanism of city image formation presented contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of new media in the international communication of city images.

Purpose This study examines similarities and differences in information processing of college mobile app adopters, as age peers, in China and the U.S., by using the heuristic-systematic model as the main theoretical framework. Method An online self-administered survey was conducted. Findings The results confirm that some peripheral factors affect personal factors. Some cultural orientations (power distance, indulgence, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance) influence app adopting behavior indirectly via information processing. Social norms significantly predict information processing and adopting behavior. Respondents share similar heuristic processing but show significant differences in systematic processing, which results in significantly different adopting behaviors. Implications Some cultural orientations affect app adopting behavior through information processing, but affect heuristic processing and systematic processing differently. Not all cultural orientations influence the decision-making process, and some orientations may be moderators instead of predictors. Social norms can create strong social motivation in app adoption. Respondents are capable of processing information so perceived behavioral control is not a significant influencer in the decision-making of app adoption. Respondents are different in systematic processing but not in heuristic processing, which calls attention to cross-cultural comparisons in terms of information processing, researchers should test at the dimensional or item level before comparing at the variable level. Value This study extends the heuristic-systematic model by connecting peripheral factors (national culture, social norms, and perceived behavioral control) and personal factors (information processing and behavior). This study also tests the special roles of social norms and perceived behavioral control, which originated from the theory of planned behavior, as peripheral factors, and enriches the literature on information processing of decision-making. This study introduces the possibility that respondents are more different in systematic processing than heuristic processing and cultural orientations affect heuristic processing and systematic processing in different ways, and also sheds light on technology acceptance literature in terms of non-adoption.

Vision and aesthetics are inseparable dimensions of national image building. Based on 106,562 China-related images from Twitter (renamed as X), this paper introduced a computational aesthetic approach to investigate the visual communication activities of social bots on Twitter and compared the similarities and differences between human and bot accounts’ posted images so as to explore the influence of social bots’ aesthetic strategies. The results show that social bots have displayed different aesthetic strategies in the construction of the China-related visual frame, and formed obvious stylistic differences with humans in brightness, saturation, color, etc. Negative binomial regression indicates that the aesthetic strategies of social bots contribute to more likes and shares. The automation of visual communication and aesthetic construction not only makes the global building and communication of national image face new situations and challenges, but also pushes the whole human visual aesthetic, creation, and communication activities under the potential subjectivity crisis.