Visual Infotainment in the political news: A cultural approach in the post-truth era

Abstract

Th is article introduces the concept of visual infotainment, the aspects of infotain-ment found in visual artefacts employed in the news. Using a case study, we examine the photographs published in the digital media to report on the negotia-tions between the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot communities, which took place in 2016 and 2017. A four-level visual framing analysis is used to identify a consistent set of frames. It aims to identify the political ideologies that appear to be behind the visual infotainment in these pictorial reports, and the specifi c ways in which hard news can be transformed into soft news. Our research confi rms the presence of visual infotainment elements of personalisation, emotion, morbidity and sensation-alism. Overall, the study shows that visual infotainment serves to establish visual frames produced by and for contradictory propagandas, one of which favours ethnic nationalism while the other promotes confl ict resolution.