Indexing authenticity in visual political (social media) communication: a metapragmatics-based analysis of two visual registers of the authentic

Lisa Blasch

doi:10.1515/mc-2020-0019

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, I apply a metapragmatics-based approach to visual communication, combined with adapted concepts of Social Semiotics (“visual modality”) and CDA-oriented visual analysis (“canons of use”), to reconstruct two visual registers of authenticity which are prevailing within a social media photo sample of recent Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Facebook, Instagram; total of 84 photos), posted during the parliamentary elections in 2017. Triangulated with the discourse analysis of the marketing manager’s metapragmatic reflections on this social media campaign, the study shows how the partly intertwined registers of (1) “professional sensorism” (as a blended register comprising emblems of sensory modality and balanced composition, thereby drawing on the conceptualization of authenticity as sensory and affective experience of “now”) and (2) “voyeuristic fictionalization” (comprising indexicals associated with fiction genre, and based on the notion of authenticity as arising via “unnoticed observing”) are conceptualized and implemented as a—superior—visual stylization, acting as a social positioning, in mediatized political communication.

Highlights

According to Reckwitz (2017), “doing being authentic”, conceptualized as a mixture of “realness”, uniqueness, and affectivity, functions as a crucial requirement for both the self and commodification processes in late modernity
Drawing on concepts originating within sociolinguistic variation research, and using tools provided by Social Semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Ravelli and van Leeuwen 2018) and more recent work on visual, especially photographic communication (Bednarek and Caple 2019 [2012]; Ledin and Machin 2018; Zappavigna 2016), the aim of this article is to delineate two visual registers and their respective conceptualizations of the authentic (i.e., the registers of (1) professional sensorism, and (2) of voyeuristic fictionalization) which are dominant in a photo sample of the social media campaign (Instagram, Facebook) of recent Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz for the Austrian parliamentary elections in 2017
Spitzmüller 2013b; Wodak and Meyer 2009b): In this study, this procedure aims at analyzing the communicative ideologies and ethno-concepts of authenticity within the metapragmatic reflections of the campaign manager. (ii) For reconstructing indexical elements within the photo sample, I draw on analytical tools of Social Semiotics (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; Ravelli and van Leeuwen 2018) and other frameworks for multimodal and visual discourse analysis (Bednarek and Caple 2019 [2012]; Ledin and Machin 2018; Zappavigna 2016); I use technical categories of photography practice

Summary

Introduction

According to Reckwitz (2017), “doing being authentic”, conceptualized as a mixture of “realness”, uniqueness, and (sensual) affectivity, functions as a crucial requirement for both the self and commodification processes in late modernity. Focusing on the field of politics, an orientation towards “staying/being authentic” is documented by many statements of, as well as about politicians (cf Amling and Geimer 2016; Higgins 2018: 389ff.). Thereby, social media serve as central tools for showing and sharing authentic experience IV-2; Zappavigna 2016: 289)—in everyday popular culture as well as within politics (cf Higgins 2018; Schill 2012)

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Conclusion