ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses solely on cartoon content to isolate meaning often imposed on the medium by cartoonists, audiences, and fellow researchers. A study of cartoons that does not take into account audience identity, cartoonist intent, and the impact of research design is susceptible to misinterpretation and misunderstanding and risks telling us more about the interests of researchers than about the communities they purport to study. Using examples of Middle East cartoons, this chapter outlines how the meaning of political cartoons is inseparable from audience identity, cartoonist intent, and, when studied, researcher interest. While both author and image remained the same, the cartoon's republication in an extremist Hutu paper altered its message from mockery to hate. However suited cartoon research, specifically, may be to interpretive analysis, it simply provides a more overt example of the contextual knowledge that is required in the analysis of all forms of media, including both images and texts.
