And I don’t know where you went when you left me but
Says here in the water you must be gone by now
I can tell somehow
One hand on the trigger of a telephone
Wondering when the call comes
Where you say it’s alright
You got your heart right

Maybe I’ll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on the porch ‘til you come back home
Oh, right
I can’t find a flight

We share the sadness
Split screen sadness

Two wrongs make it all alright tonight

ALl you need is love is a lie cause
We had love but we still said goodbye
Now we’re tired, battered fighters

And it stings when it’s nobody’s fault
Cause there’s nothing to blame at the drop of your name
It’s only the air you took and the breath you left

Maybe I’ll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on the porch ‘til you come back home
Oh, right
I can’t find a flight
So I’ll check the weather wherever you are
Cause I wanna know if you can see the stars tonight
It might be my only right

We share the sadness
Split screen sadness

I called 
Because 
I just
Need to feel you on the line
Don’t hang up this time
And I know it was me who called it over but
I still wish you’d fought me ‘til your dying day
Don’t let me get away

Cause I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me
So I can say this is the way that I used to be
There’s no substitute for time
Or for the sadness
Split screen sadness
We share the sadness

Last September 13th I had the opportunity to attend to a talk given by graphic designer Burton Kramer. Born in 1932, Kramer is a very well-known graphic designer who has a distinctive optical art way in his designs. 

The designer basically talked with us about his work during his lifetime and explained what things made him create his designs. He said he had always been interested in geometrics and colors, something we could confirm by looking at his creations that went from advertisements to signage for different companies. 

In his work we can appreciate a large use of different colors and geometrical shapes. This particular piece caught my attention. It’s called “Syncopation 3”.

In order to understand the rhetorical function of images in photo sharing applications, the following research questions is made:

 RQ: How do the images posted by politicians on photo sharing sites like Instagram function rhetorically within their campaign?

Analysis

For this purpose, the first thing that needed to be done was analyzing different images uploaded in Barack Obama’s account. The focus was in two pictures: the first one, a picture uploaded after Obama’s victory. The second picture was a picture of the President making a phone call.

The reason I focused on the first picture is because it shows a satisfied Obama surrounded by white, red and blue confetti after it was announced that he was re-elected as the President of the United States. As it was said before, images promoting Obama as a presidential candidate inviting people to vote for him were very common on the account. This specific picture illustrates how the candidate accomplished what he had been promoting through his pictures for the past year. The picture is taken from a low angle and shows a smiling Obama whose face is emphasized with the Nashville Instagram filter.

Findings

The second picture I focused on shows a happy President Obama talking on his cellphone and not looking at the camera.  Barack Obama is always portrayed as a cheerful person in the pictures uploaded on Instagram. This specific picture has a caption on it that says that he is making some phone calls and talking to voters. The Valencia filter is used for this image.

It is interesting to see how this social network helped President Obama reach his audience. Since January 2012, this account has been uploading pictures of Obama not only as the President of the United States, but mainly as a candidate for the 2012 Presidential elections. Obama had been using other social networks like Facebook or Twitter in the past, but this gave him a more visual approach that let him reach people without having to use words. On November 6, 2012, Obama won the elections against Mitt Romney. His Republican opponent did not have an official Instagram account.

Barack Obama has always tried to reach the young population, also known as the Millennial Generation. Millennials are optimistic, believe in change and favor issues like gay marriage and many topics promoted by Obama. The fact that Obama is always portrayed as a smiling optimistic human being is an excellent way to reach a target like Millennials, who are also tech savvy individuals who are more likely to have applications like Instagram on their smartphones.

The number of photos uploaded by many different users more than doubled after it was announced that Obama was re-elected. Instagram said that more than 100,000 images were uploaded with the hashtag #iVoted and more than 150,000 with the hashtag #election2012. The company said that the intimacy and immediacy of the Instagram experience had brought connections across the world never seen before. Barack Obama did a very good job reaching his audience by using this application for visual rhetoric.

Contribution

We can see how images on social networks can have such a large scale. This research has made an attempt to explain how photo-sharing applications like Instagram have rhetorical function in political campaigns. Obama’s victory had a huge impact that was visible on the application when users started to upload pictures, doubling the amount of photos normally posted in the site.

            The visual and verbal messages sent to the audience through Instagram helped this specific candidate to reach a young audience that did pay attention to what he had to say. Photo-sharing applications like Instagram help political candidates reach a large audience and make an impact on them that might change or reinforce attitudes towards them.