A Multimodal Analysis of Political Posters of the Pakistani General Election 2024

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of multimodality in online political posters designed by different political parties during the 2024 general elections in Pakistan. The endeavor of this article is to highlight how the political parties influence the voters, using the visual and linguistics devices and urging the people to cast the vote in favor of a particular party. Kress and Van’s (2006) visual grammar are important to analyze the visual and linguistic strategies in the political posters. For this purpose, the qualitative data in the form of three online posters of three main stream political parties such as Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML N), Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaaf (PTI) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) from their official Facebook web pages were chosen. The results indicate that political parties use various multimodal devices in online political posters to influence voters and shape their opinions in order to gain their support. This paper also illustrates that the online political poster is considered an important tool used in the election campaign since a large population in Pakistan is more engaged in online activities.