Visual discourse is increasingly linked to the public agenda. Detached from the state and the church since the beginning of the 19th century, today it seems more and more committed to supporting civil society (as a community of citizens linked by common interests and collective activity). This is the case in democratic societies, of course. In countries like Russia, the press is still strongly controlled by the state.
After 24.02.2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine quickly become a major topic in the international press, especially in the USA, in the European Union and - inevitably - in Russia, Belarus and some self-proclaimed (and widely unrecognized) autonomous republics.
The event rekindled an older confrontation dating back to the Cold War: Western media vs. Soviet media.
This research aims to analyze the visual discourses that are related to the current humanitarian crisis. From a methodological point of view, the research is mainly based on critical discourse analysis, but has an interdisciplinary and versatile approach that allows us to investigate the differences between "invasion" and "special military operation", between "war crimes" and "denazification". The main question is: if visual discourse articulates a certain (social) perspective, how exactly is this perspective constructed?
The visual discourses will be analyzed in relation to the discussions they generate and the political and media climate in which they emerged. The purpose of this analysis is to articulate a theoretical and methodological framework for investigating how these discourses are constructed and what are the relationships that are established between these discourses and the public sphere.