This archive documents the complex rhetorical life of Shepard Fairey's Obama Hope image. Due to its powerful impact not only in the U.S. but also across the globe, this image has been deemed by NEW YORKER art critic Peter Schjeldahl to be the most efficacious political illustration since “Uncle Sam Wants You" and the subject of academic books such as STILL LIFE WITH RHETORIC: A NEW MATERIALIST APPROACH FOR VISUAL RHETORICS and DOING DIGITAL VISUAL STUDIES: ONE IMAGE, MULTIPLE METHODOLOGIES, among many other articles published in academic and mainstream public venues.
This archive attempts to conserve this image's rich rhetorical history by offering an open-access data set in a csv file titled “Obama Hope Dataset.” This data set provides access to over 1000 webpages, preserved via the Wayback Machine, that document when and where Obama Hope and its hundreds of remixes have surfaced between 2008 and 2020.
We invite scholars and other interested parties to use and extend this data set for their own research purposes.