ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces one such interdisciplinary cooperation, which paints a multimodal picture of political communication online. In other words, by combining political iconography with multimodality, this project puts the visual into an analytical focus without overlooking the other important mediators in the process of semiosis. It introduces the annotation scheme Imagery and Communication in Online Narratives (ICON) and provides empirical examples of how it can be applied to the specific topic of political communication online, which offers content that is rich, varied, and at the same time challenging in its diversity and social resonance. Before presenting ICON in detail and applying it to concrete empirical cases, it is important to keep in mind the various distinct forms or traditions of visual and multimodal analysis from which it stems. In that sense, the ICON annotation scheme is ready for semi-automatic implementation and, thus, has the potential to generate quantities of data.
