Cartoonists, Political

Cartoon Elements

A successful political cartoon, argues historian Edward Lordan, requires five elements: a receptive audience, a medium of distribution, an artist with a creative sense of humor, a powerful subject worthy of scorn, and a negative public perception of that subject. Historian Charles Press argues that the artistic quality of the cartoon matters much less than the genuine feeling of indignation and outrage, and adds that cartoons that stand the test of time deal with subjects that have lasting importance.

In terms of subject matter, cartoonists draw from four major sources, as identified by researchers Martin Medhurst and Michael DeSousa: political commonplaces and major recurring subthemes such as national defense and electoral machinery such as campaigning; literary/cultural allusions and references that draw from mythology, literature, or folklore; personal character traits, including morals, truthfulness, and ability to lead; and situational themes, or transient episodes that occur during a campaign and are salient to the audience for a limited period of time, such as when a candidate makes a gaffe during a public speech.

Communication scholars gave increasing attention to political cartooning during the years preceding World War II and continuing after the conflict, suspicious of imagery's role in propaganda. Many of these early studies asserted the power of the cartoon with little if any empirical evidence to support the finding. Later studies revealed the power of the political cartoon was not uniform across populations or media, suggesting that the intensity of preexisting audience attitudes about the subject was very important in caricatures' effectiveness, and that people with preexisting prejudices tended to misinterpret cartoons.

A burst of empirical scholarship beginning in the 1960s cast even more doubt on political cartoons' ability to convey a fixed meaning. A 1968 study in Journalism Quarterly by Leroy Carl found that no more than 22 percent of readers extracted the same meaning from the cartoon as the artist intended. Another study of cartoons before and after the Watergate scandal in the 1970s concluded that negative reactions to a caricature were related to topical themes of the cartoon and general popularity of the politician at the time. Our understanding of how cartooning works is limited, and audience interpretations of political cartoons are dependent on many factors. Cartoons are far less likely to change minds than to reinforce preheld conceptions of those viewing the graphic message.

...