Still Images – Moving People? How visual images trigger the willingness to participate in politial protest

(05.02.2018) Cooperation project of PD. Dr. Stephanie Geise (WWU Münster) in association with political scientists Prof. Diana Panke (University of Freiburg) and Dr. Axel Heck (University of Kiel) .Since October 2017, the Friede-Springer-Foundation has sponsored the research project «Still Images – Moving People», situation at the WWU. The inter-disciplinarian project-team will now commence with a pre-study. Lead by PD Dr. Stephanie Geise and in cooperation with two colleagues from political sciences, Prof. Dr. Diana Panke (University of Freiburg) and Dr. Axel Heck (University of Kiel) the project team will examine the (inter-)relationship between perception, typification and processing of positively and negatively framed media images of selective protest movement and their protest-issues with regards to the political participation willingness of citizens.

The project originates from the observation that in an era of new media and social networks, images appear to be readily available and omnipresent whereas we observe at the same time enormous social distress within the societies, which translate into an increased protest willingness of citizens and manifest in social movements (PEGIDA, etc.) and the formation of new political parties (AfD, etc.).

It is the aim of the underlying research program to focus on the behavioral, affective and cognitive (inter-related) effects of the perception of political media images with regards to political participation. Against the background of theories of framing research in communication sciences as well as participation research in political sciences, we will focus in this first partial study primarily on the question, what influence the perceived emotional valence (positive or negative) of media images will have of the direct visual perception and further processing and elaboration of percipients.

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Dr. Stephanie Geise