Shannon Ross | Feb. 27, 2009
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| Photo by Riya V. Anandwala |
| Telecommunications associate professor Maria Elizabeth Grabe spoke to J210 students about how visuals influence politics and elections. |
Grabe and Eric Bucy, also an associate professor in telecommunications, are authors of Image Bite Politics: News and Visual Framing of Elections, which discusses image handling in the 1992 to 2004 presidential elections. Grabe formerly was an associate professor at the School of Journalism, where she conducted some of the research for this book as well as collaborated with other journalism professors on research projects.
The class already had been discussing how elements from camera angles to lighting to coloration can influence an image. Grabe explained the importance of character framing in the 2000 presidential election. Presenting the candidate as “a man of the people” played an influential role, she said. Images of George W. Bush relating with “regular” people was more believable than candidate Al Gore, who looked clearly “out of his element,” she said.
Grabe incorporated the use of imagery into character framing. Regarding the 2008 election, Grabe claimed that no reporter would have written a statement claiming Obama is a Muslim. However, Republican image handlers without hesitation would use the images of him dressed in Muslim clothing.
Grabe, who also is a research associate in political science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, said the most defining moments in elections are visually based. The 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was one of the first examples of the importance of media imagery in an election. Grabe stated that if one listened to the debate on radio, Nixon won, but if one watched the debate on television, Kennedy won. For the first time, people made judgments based on physical appearance and public poise.
According the Grabe, 68 percent of Americans get their election information from a television news source. The shrinking of sound bites and the expanding of image bites leads to a more influential media.
“We pick up visual images from the media unintentionally,” Grabe said.
Grabe and Bucy found Republicans overall were mostly shot in low camera angles, which demonstrate power, while Democrats were shot in high camera angles, which show weakness.
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| Photo by Andrew Dillon Bustin |
| Grabe said how images are handled in political coverage is more significant than the amount of coverage. |
“There is no liberal bias in the amount of coverage,” she said. “It is more about how images are handled.”
In the questions session after Grabe’s talk, one student asked about Democratic image handlers in this past election, focusing on Obama as a celebrity figure. Grabe said the celebrity image “could back fire.” The idea of trying to turn Obama in to a celebrity “will not last” due to the fact that he has many very hard decisions to make in the near future.
One of Grabe’s previous research projects, conducted with Conway and doctoral student Kevin Grieves, also looked at media bias but in different way. In that project, researchers looked at broadcaster Bill O’Reilly’s use of language in influencing the tone and meaning of the material on his Fox News show.
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