This work explores the role of images as polarising multimodal devices in digital press. More specifically, it aims at delimiting their potential contribution in the formation of distinct, combative and opposing parts, usually taking one of the sides, in newsbites, the default format of online news (Knox 2007, Porto & Alonso-Belmonte 2016). With the digitalization of media, visual elements have progressively gained importance in the composition of news. Indeed, in today's context of news reading habits, research shows that images play a leading role in the framing of the news (Entman 1993, D'Angelo 2017) and in their meaning construction (Caple 2013; Scheufele & Iyengar 2017, Stöckl et al. 2020). However, the role that images play in polarised discourse has yet to be studied in depth.
To fulfil this goal, a sample of European newsbites on the rise of extreme right and populisms was collected and analysed from a critical and socio-cognitive approach, following the notion of multimodal construal (Alonso-Belmonte & Porto, 2020), which identifies four main framing strategies: subject choice, composition, distance and point of view. Images and their relation to other modes were scrutinised to identify the main frames conveyed by the news (Semetkno & Valkenburg, 2000). Results show that, when integrated with the text, images contribute to the interpretation of a conflict frame, providing a positive representation of one group and a patent opposition to another, which is in turn negatively characterized. Findings also suggest that other frame types −responsibility, human interest… contribute to the formation of strong views and affective polarisation that may affect public opinion.
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