Abstract
In addition to discourse with words, politics and political communication always means argumentation with images (images on TV news, images in newspapers, caricatures, etc.)1. The visual also plays a role in the context of linguistic communication in the form of metaphors and images (e.g. "immigration wave", "the boat is full", "Reichskristallnacht", "the iron curtain", "blooming landscapes", "world wide web"). Political actors have always used visual media to effectively convey their messages (portraits, election posters, election commercials, election programmes, coats of arms, flags and symbols). There is a complex interrelationship between physically perceivable (external) images, linguistic images and the (internal) images that arise in the mind (cf. Tschopp & Weber 2007: 101)2. The relationship between image and politics has often been critically discussed (e.g. the discus around fascist aesthetics in the films of Leni Riefenstahl).
