Steven Seidman, associate professor and chair of strategic communications at Ithaca College, presented his paper, “The Obama Poster Explosion,” Oct. 6 at the 41st annual conference of the International Visual Literacy Association — a nonprofit organization of researchers, educators, designers, media specialists and artists dedicated to the principles of visual literacy. Seidman is also the vice president of the association.

At the conference, he received two awards: the President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the IVLA and the Editor’s Choice Award for another paper, “The Visual Design of Election Campaign Posters.”

Contributing Writer Sara Friedman spoke with Seidman about his reaction to the awards and his recent research on the use of propaganda in elections.

Sara Friedman: Could you explain the topic of the paper you presented?

Steven Seidman: It was called “The Obama Poster Explosion.” We dealt with a renaissance of political posters in the 2008 election. It’s something that hadn’t been since the 1972 election, which was the McGovern versus Nixon. [There is] an incredible number of posters by artists in support of Obama in his primary campaign and his election campaign.  

SF: What are some of the campaign posters that stand out to you?

SS: The most famous one is the Shepard Fairey poster. It was quite influential in creating the image for Obama and reinforcing it. In the article, there are lots of examples of posters. One was by Ron English, which is the Abraham-Obama poster. It’s a fusion of the two people’s images, so it looks like it’s one person with features of Lincoln and Obama. He called it the Abraham-Obama.

SF: What made you want to look into political posters?

SS: I had already written a book on the topic — the use of posters and other printed material and communication media worldwide throughout history and election campaigns. The book came out right before the election, and I was quite interested in what was going on. So I wanted to continue my study of posters because this was a key election. I also have a blog, which has continued the investigation and discussion of election media and propaganda focusing on posters. The blog had well over 9,000 hits in the month preceding the election, so it created quite a lot of interest, actually.

SF: Do you think that propaganda is an important part of politics?

SS: There are no political campaigns without propaganda. You can’t assume that you are getting factual information from campaigns, and 2008 was no exception. McCain was the experienced candidate that we could trust with the military record, and Obama was the one who could bring change and hope to America. There is a certain amount of truth in all propaganda — otherwise it wouldn’t work — but the themes and the messages are typically slanted to make people more predisposed and enthusiastic towards a candidate or a party.

SF: Has your research had any impact on how you look at elections?

SS: I scrutinize things a lot more carefully now that I have gotten very deep into studying election campaigns. It’s fascinating to me.