“Shiny Happy People Laughing”: The Protest Paradigm, WUNC, and the Visual Framing of Political Activism

Abstract

Media coverage of protest, particularly its visual framing, is crucial to the legitimacy and impact of protest movements. Typical patterns in media coverage of protests, which account for discrepancies between how protests are portrayed, are the protest paradigm and WUNC (worthy, united, numbers, commitment). In order to investigate how specific visual items and features of media images showing political protest elicit positive or negative perceptions and annotations by an audience, we study two questions: Which visual features in media images of protest elicit positive or negative perceptions and annotations by an audience? How do these perceptions correspond with the protest paradigm and WUNC, respectively? We answer these questions by conducting a qualitative focus group study with students from a mid-size German university.

Notes

1 Supplementary Information can be accessed on the publisher’s website (https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2023.2196631).

2 “+ 0,3” (and other such values provided) indicates the average valance score of an image (in this instance, image 16). The score was assigned by the focus groups on a scale of -4 (very negative) to +4 (very positive), as discussed in the Research Design section that begins on page 92.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Friede Springer Foundation. We derive no financial interest or other inequitable advantage from the sponsorship or applications of our research.

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Geise

Stephanie Geise is in the Department of Communication, University of Münster, Germany.

Axel Heck

Axel Heck is senior lecturer in International Relations at Kiel University, Germany. He has a special expertise in the field of visual international relations and has published on the visual representations of war, violent conflicts, and protest movements in the European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Perspectives, and The International Journal of Press/Politics. He has coordinated the research network “Visuality and World Politics,” funded by the German Research Foundation, and acted as a principal investigator of the interdisciplinary research project “Still images—moving people: How visual images trigger the willingness to political protest,” which was funded by the Friede Springer Stiftung. E-mail: [email protected]

Diana Panke

Diana Panke is in the Department of Political Science, Albert-Ludwigs-University, Freiburg, Germany.