Greenberg analyses in 2002 pol…

Greenberg analyses in 2002 political cartoons as a mean of graphical news discourse and underlines their importance to allow the population to interpret events and shape how they view their world . Klaus Dodds talks in 2010 about the power of cartoons in representing geopolitics and their capacity (in the South African context) to criticise power and governance .

The same author applies the same topic in 2007 to the analysis of Steve Bell’s cartoons in Britain . Juana Marín-Arrese in 2004 talks about the processes of humour used in political cartoons to provoke emotions and challenge political structures in 1970’s Spain . In 2008, she examines humour and its cognitive mechanisms, while relating it to the European Constitution Referendum in 2005. She reveals the use of humour as a critic of French political elites and the Spanish government . Iro Sani, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah, Faiz Sathi Abdullah and Afida Mohamed Ali analyse in 2012 humour as a communication tool and the visual power of political cartoons in Nigerian newspapers.

They found that humour in cartoons acted as a stress relief and a help to make an opinion on socio-political problems . Iro Sani, Mardziah Hayati Abdullah, Faiz Sathi Abdullah & Afida Mohamad Ali in Political Cartoons as a Vehicle of Setting Social Agenda: The Newspaper Example (2012) use political cartoons as a source of data to research social phenomena.

They found that cartoonists in Nigerian newspapers would choose their topics according to the most concerning issues for citizens and therefore set the social agenda in mainstream media .Many researchers also wrote case studies of political cartoons in a specific political context or about a particular event. Ernest G. Bormann, Jolene Koester and Janet Bennett analyse in 1978 cartoons from the 1976 presidential campaign in the USA and the construction of shared fantasies for different groups of voters . Michael Cohen, in 2007 talks about the role of radical cartoonists in making propaganda and framing the culture of popular radicalism, and the way a harmless entertainment becomes a major weapon for radical mass communication, allowing class consciousness and building a revolutionary social movement by exposing social conflict, highlighting the roots of social problems and inequalities . Ilan Danjoux in 2007 draws a history of political cartooning and explain the apparent decline of editorial cartoons in the USA and the new challenges digitalisation is bringing for publishers and cartoonists . Joan L.

Conners analyses in 2007 how popular culture references influenced the reception of cartoons by American citizens during the 2004 presidential campaign. She found that popular culture references allowed cartoonists to reconcile people with everyday politics and enhanced the satire process . Finally, Lin Esders, Paula MsDonald and Keith Townsend examine in 2008 the tone of Australian political cartoons in the WorkChoices debate and found that most cartoons would express the population’s concerns and used a moderate tone, rarely showing a real revolutionary fervour .