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This study examines how news images of refugees in the context of the war in Ukraine mobilize intergroup relations. A visual rhetorical analysis is used to examine the rhetorical strategies employed in news images of Ukrainian refugees in a mainstream Finnish national newspaper from February 25 to May 31, 2022. The data consisted of 465 images. The study constructed four humanizing visual rhetorical strategies based on the visual expression in news images: maternalizing, fragilizing, agonizing, and activizing. The rhetorical strategies constructed four subject positions for Ukrainian refugees: vulnerable victims, innocent victims, suffering Ukrainians, and persistent/resilient Ukrainians. All rhetorical strategies implicitly communicated the subject position of evil to Russia. The paper contributes to the current knowledge of the humanization of refugees in media discourse and the potential of media images to mobilize intergroup relations. Methodologically, the paper elaborates visual rhetorical analysis as a means of social psychological study of refugee discourse in the context of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention has been given to understanding support for the far‐right, there is a lack of focus on the way in which a threat of the far‐right can be used for political ends. This paper addresses this using the UK Brexit debate as an illustration. The question therefore is: What is talk about the far‐right used to do in discussions about Brexit? A discursive psychological approach addresses a sample of newspaper reports containing both 'Far‐Right' and 'Brexit', from the first quarter of 2019 (n = 45). The analysis identifies a range of uses of talk about the far‐right: (1) An opponent of Brexit is called a Nazi by pro‐Brexit protesters, who are labelled far‐right; (2) A lack of Brexit is presented as fuel for the far‐right; (3) Remain supporters reject the idea that a lack of Brexit fuels the far‐right; (4) A link with the far‐right is rejected by a prominent Brexit supporter; and (5) Support for Brexit is again linked with the far‐right. The far‐right can be used as a strategic tool by opposing sides of the Brexit debate and – significantly – the supposed threat of the far‐right can be used to placate far‐right ideas, rather than to genuinely challenge them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]