Political Communication (PolCom)

Visual communication plays a central role in the communication of political actors. In recent years, the forms and proportion of visual communication have increased dramatically. This has been accompanied by a massive increase in digital data and, as a result, the development of new research methods for ‘text as data’. Technological developments in data processing, the capacity expansion of digital infrastructures and, most recently, the utilisation of generative artificial intelligence are leading to a rapid increase in images and videos on the internet. The corresponding development of social media platforms illustrates this trend. PolKom aims to harness the rapidly increasing demand for methodological innovations in image and video analyses for social science research and teaching.

Research on rhetorical strategies in international relations has so far mainly approached the subject using qualitative methods. Studies using quantitative methods of analysis have so far only focussed on individual elements of rhetorical strategies. PolKom aims to close this gap and use a multi-dimensional, quantitative approach to analyse rhetorical strategies in international political communication. Although international organisations have generated digital registers of debates and speeches, some of which go far back into the past, research on international political communication has so far paid little attention to these archives. Within PolKom, these data are to be made usable for research and made available as data sets in publicly accessible repositories (especially in AUSSDA).

Current forms of visual communication often occur in combination with other modes of communication such as text and sound. Therefore, research designs in communication research are increasingly multi-modal. In this context, PolKom serves to develop and validate new methods of combined text, image, audio and video analysis. Initial approaches to multi-modal data analysis are being tested and expanded, for example to analyse video recordings and stenographic minutes of the plenary sessions of the Austrian National Council.