Investigating Visual Content Shared over Twitter during the 2019 EU Parliamentary Election Campaign

Political communication increasingly takes on visual forms. Yet, despite their ubiquity in everyday and digital campaigning, the use of these visuals remains critically understudied. In this article, we investigate formats modes content deployed by Twitter users over a two-week period leading up to 2019 EU Parliamentary elections across two publics: those discussing election at large more contentious issue membership. Conducting multilingual, cross-comparative thematic analysis sample 1,097 images, find that<em>: </em>(1) Visuals originating from traditional political actors prevailed among both discourses; (2) shared substantial amounts anti-EU, populist and, lesser extent, extremist though remained largely disjointed mainstream public debate; (3) humor emerged as vector for anti-establishment Eurosceptic themes, especially discussions critical European project. We discuss implications our findings study social media manipulation.