This research explores visual political engagement online – how citizens participate in the dynamism of life in society by expressing their opinions and emotions on various issues of democratic life in image-based social media posts, independently of collective actions.
Looking beyond large digital social movements to focus on the everyday, the book Visual Citizenship. Communicating opinions and emotions on social media (Routledge 2023), which is based on this research, provides a well-documented and comprehensive framework of key notions, concrete methods and examples of empirical insights into everyday visual citizenship on social media. It shows how the visual has become ubiquitous in citizens’ communication on social media, focusing on how citizens use visual content to express their emotions and opinions on social media platforms when they discuss politics in a large sense.