Referring to the recent ‘visual turn’ in Critical Security Studies, the aim of this article is threefold. First, by taking the concept of visual securitization one step further, we intend to theorize the image as an iconic act understood as an act of showing and seeing. This turn to the performativity of the visual directs our attention to the securitizing power of images. Second, this article addresses the methodological challenges of analysing images and introduces an iconological approach. Iconology enables the systematic interpretation of images as images by also taking their social embeddedness into account. In the third part of this article we apply this theoretical and methodological framework to analyse a cover of the TIME magazine published in summer 2010. The cover shows a young Afghan woman whose ears and nose were cut off accompanied by the headline: ‘What happens if we leave Afghanistan’. This cover image not only provoked a heated debate in the USA about the (ab)use of images in order to legitimize the continuity of the war in Afghanistan, but shows how gender and the body are visually securitized.

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While media images can ease political information perception and processing, the impact of images on behavioral intentions to engage in protest is relatively unexplored. We ask: Under what conditions can news images of protest “move” people and affect the willingness to participate? Aiming to answer this question from an information-processing perspective, we shed light on the nexus between spontaneous, sensory behavior and cognition in response to news media images of protest. We conducted a multigroup experiment in which 143 recipients were randomly exposed to four news images of protest and their visual attention monitored. Multilevel regressions indicate that viewers fixate on images of protest prior to accompanying texts. When exposed to protest images with a negative valence, an increase in the observation duration for protest images increases the recipient’s willingness to participate. Contrariwise, when viewing protest images with a positive valence, a longer observation duration does not increase participatory intentions. Irrespective of image valence, the greater the salience that viewers subjectively ascribed to the image, the greater their willingness to protest concerning the depicted issue. Our analysis also reveals a cross-level interaction effect indicating that the impact of image observation duration on the willingness to engage is conditional on individual levels of political interest: The positive effect of observing protest images on the willingness to protest is especially increased, if an individual is highly politically interested. These results indicate that, under certain conditions, media images are efficient carriers of political content that can motivate citizens to protest.

Research in communication and political science has underlined the relevance of participation offline and online for the performance and stability of democratic societies, and shown that media has a substantial impact on people's willingness to participate in political discourses. However, the impact of visual message features, prevalent in contemporary online environments, on political participation online remains unclear and needs further research. This article examines two research questions: How and under what conditions do digital news media images trigger political online participation? Which roles do specific image features ("photo news factors" such as negativity, emotionality, visual attraction, or saliency) play in this respect? Based on an experimental study integrating eyetracking measurement, our empirical analysis reveals that individuals are more willing to politically participate online, if they perceive news media images with specific "photo news factors": press photography individuals acknowledge as surprising, emotional, attractive, newsworthy, that is geographically proximal, controversial, relevant, or salient. We also find that the sensory perception of news media images can cause a positive and significant impact. If the media image is regarded as being newsworthy or as negative by individual recipients, they are more likely to then engage in online participation.

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