Exploring Popular Culture, Visual Imagery, and Narrative in Politics and Public Policy

Popular culture and visual communication have become increasingly important arenas for political meaning-making and policy debate. Images, symbols, performances, films, television programmes, memes, political cartoons, comics, advertisements, protest signs, and social media content shape how political actors, institutions, and policy problems are represented and understood. These forms of communication can direct attention towards particular issues, influence perceptions of responsibility, construct identities, and promote competing visions of society. However, political science and policy scholarship have traditionally privileged written and spoken forms of communication, leaving the visual dimensions of political processes comparatively underexamined. Existing research is also dispersed across political communication, public policy, cultural studies, visual studies, and critical theory, with limited dialogue between different theoretical and methodological traditions. A more systematic investigation is therefore needed to understand how visual narratives influence political interpretation, participation, advocacy, and policy development.This Research Topic aims to advance the study of visual communication in political science and public policy by examining how visual forms construct, reinforce, and contest political and policy-related meanings. It will explore how popular culture contributes to the framing of policy problems, the representation of political actors and institutions, and the communication of alternative visions of society. Contributions may address how citizens interpret visual policy communication, whether visual narratives affect political attitudes or participation, and how images are used in advocacy, social movements, and public debate. The Research Topic welcomes constructivist, interpretivist, critical, feminist, positivist, and other theoretical perspectives, as well as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research.To gather further insights into the relationship between visual communication, political participation, and policy processes, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Visual narratives and political participation• Popular culture and the construction of policy problems• Film, television, memes, comics, and political cartoons• Social media imagery and political engagement• Visual communication in social movements and advocacy• Political representation, identity construction, and visual culture• Citizen interpretation and the effects of visual policy communication• Visual framing, symbolism, and policy narratives• Critical, feminist, and postcolonial approaches to visual politics• Narrative Policy Framework and visual narrative analysis• Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to visual research• Ethical challenges in the production and interpretation of political images Topic editors: Aaron Smith-Walter, Honey Minkowitz Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86979/exploring-popular-culture-visual-imagery-and-narrative-in-politics-and-public-policy