Analyzing Iraqi Political Cartoons

Abstract

Pictures have an essential effect on our thoughts and decisions. We have also noticed how these pictures produced in the form of cartoons affect our viewpoints. They do so since we are addicted to social media to the extent it can manipulate our thoughts unconsciously and obnoxiously. Besides, people don’t have the courage to express their viewpoints clearly, so they tend to use the satire to keep their face. This motivates the researcher to analyze the underlying structure of this satire presented in caricatures to read the message clearly. This research aims at revealing the way the political caricatures are produced and the main characteristics of political caricatures. Incorporating a methodology depending on selecting some samples, this paper is a semiotic analysis of political caricatures announced through the election campaign 2018 in Iraq. It concentrates on the format caricatures used as a communicative channel on net platform to come up with essential senses and prevailing political matters. This is carried out by adopting Barthes’ semiotic theory which is the first apparent semiotic approach. It is a good means to analyze the implied structure, including the dictionary and implied senses of creating influence of political caricatures. Besides, it provides us with a good means to interpret and understand political caricatures. This is quite important since political cartoons work as an approach to comprehend human consciousness.

Keywords

• Semiotic analysis
• political cartoons
• election campaign
• Barthes’ semiotic theory ‎