Literary studies of political caricature: a quantitative analysis of publications indexed in the Scopus

Abstract

The author reviews the past-to-present academic literature on cartoon studies (mainly editorial and political cartoons), that reflects the functional crisis of the cartoon associated with the development of the media space and new challenges. Some of the main trends, taxonomies, and approaches to date in political cartoon research are shown, and some of the weaknesses and strengths in the present field as well as aspects that are underdeveloped or have yet to be explored are highlighted. The articles in English published between 2017 and 2022 were reviewed to provide an understanding of the current state of the matter in various areas. The corpus was gathered by searching publications in international database Scopus. Each paper was classified based on its publication date, place of origin, subject of research, and frequency of citations. The quantitative approach employed enables the tracking of advancement in the field of cartoon studies over a given timeframe. Six distinct aspects pertinent to research in the field of political cartoons are suggested in a holistic approach, although this categorization is by no means all-inclusive and there is substantial overlap. The study of political cartoons during chosen period was more comprehensive and extensive than the study of editorial cartoons. Several proposals for further research in this field were put forward.