Congratulations to
Sophie Estep
Newhouse
Information Management & Technology & Public Relations
Honors Thesis Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jennifer Stromer-Galley
Thesis Title:
Digital Visual Political Communication: Social Media Imagery of the 2020 Presidential Election
The important role of social media in politics is changing the way digital visual political communication influences potential voters. Assessing what types of images are posted by politicians to their publics can create new ways to organize and analyze political messaging across social platforms. Exploring images posted on Instagram and Twitter by Democrat and Republican 2020 presidential election candidates during their campaign allowed for an extensive, diverse dataset; this dataset determines what politicians are sharing online and if human-based coding methods can combine with machine-based coding methods to determine larger visual attributes in political imagery. These human-based and machine-based assessments combine to form the hypothesis that images encouraging aspects of community are posted more often than other types of images.
Links to Project Materials:
https://files.emailmeform.com/742180/HI7Ji1z0/Final_%20Digital%20Visual%20Political%20Communication_%20%20Social%20Media%20Imagery%20of%20the%20%202020%20Presidential%20Election%20%281%29.pdf