Van Ham, P. 2001. The rise of the brand state: The postmodern politics of image and reputation. Foreign Affairs 80 (5): 1–6. Reich, S., and R. Lebow. 2014. Goodbye hegemony: Power and influence in the global system. Princeton: Princeton University Press. But while such tactics can mobilize supporters, manage impressions, and amplify political messages, it also means political campaigns become more superficial. The question is whether citizens are more manipulated as the visual vocabularies of election candidates further emotionalize political communication. Hein, P. 2010. Patterns of post-war reconciliation in Japan and Germany. A comparison. East Asia 27 (1): 145–164.

Now, Professor Callahan is exploring the imagery around wearing masks. Often seen as problematic before the pandemic, as they were viewed as concealing something, masks now have more of a positive association with public health campaigns. Schimmelfennig, F. 2015. Liberal intergovernmentalism and the euro area crisis. Journal of European Public Policy 22 (2): 177–195. Gerzema, J., and D. Reibstein. 2016. Best countries: Defining success and leadership in the twenty-first century. New York: US News/BAV Consulting/Wharton. Wednesday: Using Images in Research on Immigration Detention: Tensions and Challenges [link to follow] (F. Esposito) Brattberg, E. and B. Pires de Lima. 2015. Germany’s Unipolar Moment. Berlin Policy Journal, 21 September. http://berlinpolicyjournal.com/germanys-unipolar-moment/.Fake news, for example, is awarded far greater power if delivered with an image that appears believable and reinforces existing media tropes and public beliefs. In her new book, Chiara Bottici continues her pathbreaking work in imaginal cultural analysis. Neither properly imaginary nor precisely imaginative, the imaginal is the image broken free of the restraints of both indexicality and referentiality, becoming in the process free-floating agencies in modernity's advertising, spectacular, sports, military, and political games. Hayden White, University Professor, Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz Human culture is a visual culture. From cave paintings to selfies, we have always used images to tell stories about our lives, experiences and understanding of the world. The interesting thing here is that they didn’t get rid of the previous law, so you were simultaneously required to wear and not wear a mask!” says Professor Callahan. “To me, what’s interesting is how this simple object is manipulated, it’s about revealing and concealing and is deeply political.” This is an excellent book, very original and elegantly written. Chiara Bottici's contribution to the field of politics is an original one, since, even though there exist other theories about the social imaginary, Bottici's is pivotal in allowing us to understand contemporary politics and its paradoxes. It is a great addition to the field of academic discussions about politics, religion, imagination, and conceptual history. María Pía Lara, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana

Ostrowski, D. 2009. Die public diplomacy der deutschen Auslandsvertretungen. Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik 2 (2): 136–146. Grix, J. 2012. “Image” leveraging and sports mega-events: Germany and the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Journal of Sport and Tourism 17 (4): 289–312. Eddy, M. 2015. Volkswagen to recall 8.5 million vehicles in Europe. New York Times, 15 October. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/business/international/volkswagen-germany-recall.html (20 October 2015). PEW. 2014. Global opposition to U.S. surveillance and drones, but limited harm to America’s Image, July. See Chapter 4 ‘How Asians View Each Other’. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/14/global-opposition-to-u-s-surveillance-and-drones-but-limited-harm-toamericas-image/. To highlight the importance of visual media and emotion to his students, Professor Callahan co-teaches a class on Visual International Politics with Darren Moon from LSE’s Eden Centre. As part of the class, students make films and, while learning the technical aspects of filmmaking, also learn new ways of understanding the world, away from the usual academic activities of reading articles and dealing with theories.

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PIA/BMI (Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Bundesministerium des Innern). 2006. Fußball-WM 2006: Abschlussbericht der Bundesregierung. Berlin: PIA/BMI. Brown, T. 2013. West Germany and the global sixties: The antiauthoritarian revolt 1962–1978. New York: Cambridge University Press.

German National Tourist Board. 2008. The 2006 FIFA World Cup and its effect on the image and economy of Germany. Frankfurt: GNTB. Politics in the Middle East is now seen. The image has claimed a central place in the processes through which political dynamics are communicated and experienced in the region. States, nonstate actors, opposition groups and ordinary people are engaging in political struggle through the image, and the media, especially the visual media, are not only mediators in this context, they are also political actors, deliberately using images to exert political influence. The image is at the heart of political struggle, which has become an endless process of images battling, reversing, erasing and replacing other images. Political struggle, then, is an inherently visually productive process. It is also itself visual to a large degree: It is a struggle over presence, over visibility. For authoritarian states, political power means having control over visual production and consumption. For political oppositions, democratic representation merges with visual representation. For people, possessing political agency means possessing the ability to be seen, not only heard. GIZ. 2015a. Germany in the eyes of the world. https://www.giz.de/en/mediacenter/3361.html (27 August 2015).Berbuir, N., M. Lewandowsky, and J. Siri. 2015. The AfD and its sympathisers: Finally a right-wing populist movement in Germany? German Politics 24 (2): 154–178. Visual media – films, images, performances – can shape our view of the world and impact our emotions in profound ways. Just think of the iconic image of the “tank man”, a lone protester standing in front of a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square, Beijing in 1989. An image viewed by many as speaking truth to power. Or the tragic photograph of drowned toddler Alan Kurdi, on a beach in Turkey, during the Mediterranean migration crisis in 2015, a picture which some believe provoked Angela Merkel to allow over one million refugees into Germany.