Visual representations of wealth inequality in political communication

Wealth inequality is deepening in many countries around the world, presenting increasing challenges to public notions of fairness while simultaneously proving resistant to democratic intervention. This article looks at one element of the politics of wealth inequality which has so far received relatively little attention: visual representations in political communication. The authors collected an original dataset of 243 images posted on Facebook by UK news media and civil society organizations to explore how different actors visually represent the problem of wealth inequality. They used content analysis to demonstrate that news media in particular tends to visualize inequality through images of wealth itself, such as luxury goods and property, whereas civil society more often tries to contrast richness and poorness. They conducted social semiotic analysis on two sets of recurring tropes to investigate the complex trade-offs in how visual content frames inequality, whether through ambivalent focus on the super-rich or a claim to objectivity and completeness through birds-eye aerial photography.