Thursday, August 12, 2021
Hilljes election campaign check
The picture threatens to lose control
A column by Johannes Hillje
The image of the candidates for chancellor influences the voting decision. But instead of “image control”, some candidates in this election campaign are threatened with losing control of external perception.
It could have been a liberation for Armin Laschet’s image policy: The CDU candidate for chancellor visited a boxing camp in Frankfurt on Wednesday at the start of his campaign tour. “Laschet is combative” would be the message for which the appropriate images could have been produced in view of falling polls. Yes, even have to. Because the amount of unfavorable photos taken by the candidate could meanwhile fill entire photo albums.
But the CDU campaign staging department also slept in the Frankfurt boxing camp: although you can see the candidate in action in the boxing ring on the CDU’s Instagram profile, they do his boxing glove is open, the Velcro fastener dangles to the ground, Laschet’s punch technique seems shy, his facial expression more amused than determined. No attack. No break in the air.
Images do not simply depict politicians, they form their “image”, that is, the public perception of key characteristics of the person. Communication research explores the characteristics that are decisive for the image of a politician. Four characteristics are considered to be particularly important:
- First, it is about the integrity of the person, which is composed of the ascribed honesty and trustworthiness. The assessment here is whether the person does what they promise and is what they claim to be. There is no doubt that the green applicant left feathers in this category.
- Second, competence plays a key role in image. What is meant is the ability to solve problems that are considered urgent with the necessary expertise. The SPD is very direct and writes the equation “Scholz = Competence” on its posters.
- Third, the leadership qualities of the person are important: assertiveness, the ability to forge compromises and provide orientation, as well as crisis management are the essential factors here.
- And fourthly, non-political features play an often underestimated role: attractiveness, dress style, liking, habitus, even hobbies are included in the evaluation of this category. Empirical evidence leaves no doubt in this area: good-looking politicians have an advantage. The only question is what tastes the voters have. Tailor-made suit (Olaf Scholz), leather jacket (Annalena Baerbock) or cufflinks (Armin Laschet) – and that is the well-meaning look into the cloakroom of the candidates.
It is undisputed that the image of the candidates, along with party preferences and thematic considerations, plays a significant role in the voting decision. But not all characteristics that influence the image are equally important. In the 2017 federal election, according to a by-election survey, integrity, sympathy and competence had the greatest weight. Angela Merkel scored better than her challenger Martin Schulz in all of these categories. Her sentence “You know me” was already the culmination of her image campaign in 2013.
Backlog in image policy
Now the image is not formed by images alone. The assessments of the candidates in public discourse, i.e. by journalists, influencers and other opinion makers, also contribute to this. Face-to-face encounters can also make a difference. However, the internet has taken the visualization of political communication to a whole new level. Helmut Schmidt once said in his cheeky and friendly way about Konrad Adenauer: “There was no television, the old man didn’t have to walk around with a friendly face all day.” Today one would have to mainly refer to the social media. The “Talk Show Republic” has long been driven by the “Twitter Republic”. And social media is visual media. The compulsion to take pictures reigns on Instagram, Twitter also allows pure text contributions, but these achieve an average of around 25 percent less reach than illustrated tweets.
The dominance of images in the digital world multiplies their already considerable impact on the public. For candidates this means that “image control” has become a central requirement. Politicians like Barack Obama or Emmanuel Macron have or had understood that. Her images express integrity, closeness and leadership in an iconographic way. The local staff has some catching up to do.
Laschet will find out in these days how quickly a loss of control can threaten. One day after a photo detail gave the false impression that it was literally leaving the citizens of the flood region in the rain, he stood himself in the rain to be on the safe side. The result was the photos that illustrate his low in the polls this week.
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