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The visual construction of “the people” and “proximity to the people” on the online platforms of the National Front and Swiss People’s Party

Die visuelle Konstruktion des „Volkes“ und der „Volksnähe“ in der online-Kommunikation des Front Nationals und der Schweizerischen Volkspartei

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Abstract

The article explores and compares how the online communication of the National Front (FN) and Swiss People’s Party (SVP) visualise and define “the people” and “proximity to the people” in the wake of the Swiss federal elections and the French regional elections in 2015. Considerations based on netnography, discourse analysis and visual culture studies inform the corpus-based approach of the study. The results of the analysis show significant differences in the way each party represents itself: the FN visually frames itself as a party for the people whereas the SVP portrays itself as a party of the people. This is due to distinct ways of depicting the relation between party representatives and citizens as well as the “in-group”.

Zusammenfassung

Der Beitrag untersucht und vergleicht, wie die Online-Kommunikation des Front National (FN) und der Schweizerischen Volkspartei (SVP) das „Volk“ und die „Volksnähe“ kurz vor den Eidgenössischen Wahlen in der Schweiz und den Regionalwahlen in Frankreich im Jahr 2015 visuell darstellen und deuten. Überlegungen auf der Grundlage der Netnographie, Diskursanalyse und den Visual Culture Studies bilden den korpus-basierten Ansatz der Studie. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse legen dar, dass Zeigekonventionen der einzelnen Parteien den FN eher als eine Partei für das Volk und die SVP als eine Partei des Volkes rahmen. Dies indem die Beziehung zwischen politischen VertreterInnen und BürgerInnen oder die „Wir-Gruppe“ unterschiedlich visuell konstruiert werden.

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Notes

  1. The Swiss People’s Party is also known under its French and Italian appellation Democratic Union of the Centre (UDC).

  2. In the second half of the 1990s, both parties launched a party website; the first political parties of their countries to do so (cf. Dézé 2011; Skenderovic 2009).

  3. While Switzerland held Federal elections for the National Council and the first round of elections to the Council of States on 18 October, France had regional elections on 6 and 13 December. These elections took place in time for our study since election campaigns have become moments of increased visual production (Knieper and Müller 2004: p. 7).

  4. We noted that in February 2016, the FN and SVP had transformed their websites and social media accounts. Since then, a large part of the visuals studied in this article were no longer accessible.

  5. This way of proceeding was inspired by netnographic approaches of Jouët and Le Caroff (2013).

  6. This pin board was not analysed by Luginbühl (2014) since his study ended shortly before the party changed its web appearance in 2014 and newly included content of social media. However, we can say that the way the SVP uses its online platforms has not fundamentally changed since Luginbühl’s study (cf. introduction).

  7. Coding categories that did not emerge from the coding process itself were based on our above-mentioned and preceding “netnographic” observations.

  8. At this point we would like to mention that one author of this article is a French and the other a Swiss-German sociologist. During data coding and interpretation, both repeatedly informed each other when cultural knowledge was mobilised during visual interpretation.

  9. In an article, Boullier and Crepel (2013) lay great stress on the importance of all available information that surround a photographic image circulating on the internet (e. g. tags, likes, album descriptions etc.). During the analysis of our visual corpora, we also gave special consideration to the different places of publication (website and social media) as well as captions accompanying photographic images.

  10. We did not push our analysis of the leader figure of MLP further. Boudillon (2005) and Achin et al. (2008) did this work.

  11. For the clip see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysYg6sWD8B4 (accessed on 30.10.2015).

  12. At an Assembly of delegates, delegates decide on suggestions regarding federal voting objects, launch popular initiatives or elect party presidents, new members etc.

  13. Landsgemeinden are cantonal assemblies that have been abolished in all but two cantons. During Landsgemeinden voting is accomplished by those in favour of a motion raising their hands.

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  1. Lab Capitalism, Culture and Societies (LACCUS), UNIL University of Lausanne, Building Géopolis - Office 5330, Quartier Mouline, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Elsa Gimenez & Natalie Schwarz

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  1. Elsa Gimenez
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  2. Natalie Schwarz
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Correspondence to Elsa Gimenez.

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Gimenez, E., Schwarz, N. The visual construction of “the people” and “proximity to the people” on the online platforms of the National Front and Swiss People’s Party. Österreich Z Soziol 41, 213–242 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-016-0200-3

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