Visual Landscapes and the Abortion Issue

Abstract

Despite increased scholarly interest in how activists use visuals in claim-making and mobilization, little is known about how mainstream news media visually represent social movements and their causes over time. Given the number of studies that argue that journalistic routines, norms, and conventions create hegemonic discourse around political issues, this gap is surprising. In this article, the authors examine whether the images used to visually represent the abortion issue are homogenized. Drawing on an analysis of 2,093 print and electronic news images associated with the abortion debate, the authors find that the visuals used in media coverage are very similar. Likewise, the authors find that the most frequently shown visual landscapes for the abortion issue are relatively stable across six different kinds of events including commemorations, incidents of clinic violence, legislation, Supreme Court decisions, presidential elections, and executive nominations. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for the study of social movements and call for more research on how visual landscapes influence audience understanding of both new and enduring issues.