RIGHTRIGHTIMAGE is the first substantial and in-depth analysis of the online visual world of right-wing European political parties. Recent research on right-wing parties and politicians has focused on their use of social media, but it has mostly discussed textual materials, affording little space to images. And yet, social media images have radically changed political communication, which is becoming increasingly visual. Comprehending this revolution, and the right-wing parties’ aesthetic is crucial for understanding their
popular traction. RIGHTIMAGE will develop an interdisciplinary conceptual armature from the humanities and social sciences to examine the rhetoric, strategies and genealogy of the images that seven parties circulate on social media platforms. This focus on images aims to provide an original perspective on the European right, and to explore the historical roots of its current visual identities. Research will combine machine-learning methods with qualitative analyses of motifs and digital objects (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok accounts), concentrating on how visuals are used to substantiate party policies, stage threats to sovereignty, and establish ethnonationalist conceptions of “the people”. This examination will draw comparisons with the iconographic traditions of nationalism and popular sovereignty, as well as with the imagery developed by parties that do not identify as right-wing. The methodology of this research rests on the idea that images circulated on social media platforms can neither be construed as reproductions of reality nor be explored via the hermeneutic devices that are employed to examine texts. Social media images have specific features, the study of which requires conceptual and methodological frameworks that this project will help to shape.
RIGHTIMAGE will forge new paths in the study of art history and political communication, and will impact disciplines where images, new media and social movements are of concern.