The cute and the fluffy: pets, humour and personalisation in political communication
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378076%3A_____%2F22%3A00566771" target="_blank" >RIV/68378076:_____/22:00566771 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/692" target="_blank" >https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/692</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2022.10.4.692" target="_blank" >10.7592/EJHR.2022.10.4.692</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The cute and the fluffy: pets, humour and personalisation in political communication
Original language description
When serious official political statements are not enough to get people’svotes, politicians often turn to attention-grabbing and emotion-triggering self-presentation. They give the public access to their “normal, everyday” lives through personalisation and use other tools of “new” politics to create a favourable image of themselves. They can also show the unexpected, backstage aspects of their lives, such as their interactions with their pets. The paper analyses four case studies from different countries (Belarus, Estonia, Slovakia and Spain) in which politicians’ references to their pets became a prominent topic in internet communication and provoked numerous humorous reactions in the form of memes. By looking at various degrees of politicians’ personalisation strategies, we show that “new”and “old”politics should be regarded as the poles of a continuum rather than a binary opposition. We also discuss the content, form and stance of the humorous internet memes posted in reaction to the appearance of politicians’ pets in the news. Our research indicates that such memes function to provoke a discussion and, as a result, form a polyvocal commentary on events, the politicians, however, must take risks accompanying unconventional, revealing political communication and hope that “there's no such thing as bad publicity”.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—
Classification
Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
—
OECD FORD branch
50404 - Anthropology, ethnology
Result continuities
Project
—
Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2022
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
European Journal of Humour Research
ISSN
2307-700X
e-ISSN
2307-700X
Volume of the periodical
10
Issue of the periodical within the volume
4
Country of publishing house
PL - POLAND
Number of pages
31
Pages from-to
99-129
UT code for WoS article
—
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85149679279