What is Visual Trope

In the present political moment, “border walls” between the U.S. and Mexico have become a flashpoint, representing binaries like governed / ungoverned spaces, security / insecurity, morality / immorality, respect / disrespect for human rights, human unity / disunity, North / South, haves / have-nots, citizens / non-citizens, Republicans / Democrats, conservatives / liberals, patriots / traitors, nationalists / internationalists (or globalists), and others. This work explores some of the thematic Global North – Global South implications of a notional “border wall” based on social imagery (in a multi-loop image analysis approach). This work questions how the “other” may be viewed through the limiting slats of a fence or windows in a wall. In addition to the image analyses, topic-related textual data will also be studied from various sources: academia, journalism, and social media (including mass search correlations, big data word search, related tags networks, and #hashtag network analysis).