Between the expected and the unexpected: a bus-bar as a political campaign action
The 18th of May was the day of the last general election in Portugal. Political actions by several parliamentary candidates took place all over the country, as well as many other campaign actions in public spaces. These campaigns are trying to garner attention and votes amongst the widest range of people, from varied and diverse backgrounds and age groups, including the target audiences around universities. This text starts from the observation of the surroundings of the University of Minho, in Gualtar, Braga, on May 7, and is stimulated by a concrete political campaign action, conceived by the use of a bus-bar [1]. The campaign is analysed through the vehicle it employs and its dynamics throughout the day [2], highlighting what is socially most expected and most unexpected, between the conventional and the unprecedented.
Figure 1. Bus-bar parked at the Gualtar roundabout, in front of the University of Minho campus, on May 7. Photograph taken at 7.55 pm.
Credits: Pedro Eduardo Ribeiro
Ledin and Machin (2018) follow Gibson and Voloshinov when delving into affordances, i.e. “the ideas and assumptions” that “shape communication and social behavior” (pp. 29-30) of materials such as vehicles. Helena Pires and Cynthia Luderer give an account of the already recognised “meanings” and those that are yet to be recognised, pointing out that affordances “change over time, determining principles of regulation, but also opening up space for unexpected uses and creative freedom” (2024, para. 8). This is how meanings are produced and reproduced over time, through various contexts (e.g. political, socio-cultural, temporal), as well as both established and emerging discourses and counter-discourses, from which ideologies can be uncovered (Ribeiro, 2024a; 2024b; van Dijk, 2017). Communicating inevitably involves moving between the expected and the unexpected.
At the roundabout in front of the University of Minho campus in Braga, a vehicle stands out. While strolling around, one can observe what is not obvious at first glance, as a flâneur (Barbosa & Lopes, 2019).
Political actions are materialised through semiotic materials. Examples of these are posters, billboards or, as this essay shows, vehicles. These cannot be separated from the interactions developed with people, whose behaviour can promote ideologies about and in social reality. Following Ledin and Machin (2018, p. 11), this is possible due to their “physical presence”, their “design” and their ability to become meaningful, which are the result of “semiotic choices” and their “modes” (van Leeuwen, 2022). In other words, those result from what people behind them choose and how they mean something and thus construct meaning.
Starting with what could be interpreted as the most unexpected, even if it’s not a pioneering idea (e.g., Zappettini, 2019): the vehicle. It corresponds to a bus, which goes against the paths of those who are driving around the roundabout, on the bypass and to other branches from there. It settled itself there. It hit the road on May 1st. Painted in several different shades of blue, highlighting a lighter tone, a colour that suggests balance and pleasure (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021), it was parked right in front of the main entrance to the campus. Indeed, the bus covers the red block “Universidade do Minho” and “Campus de Gualtar” with its logo. The bus had two floors, one of which was operational, open as a bar, serving beers by the pint and bringing together people, apparently young university students, who were socialising in front of it. Hence the name bus-bar. On top of that painting, some words and symbols can be depicted. “- BUROCRACY/ + HOMES”, “ACCELERATE PORTUGAL”, “THIS TIME, IT’S LIBERAL” or “VOTE i/ iniciativa liberal”. The latter denotes that the bus is associated with a political action by the Liberal Initiative (IL) [3] party.
Figure 2. Frame of a film clip that sums up the political action during the transition of May 7’s evening to May 8. Captured on May 10, 2025, at 11.59 pm.
Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJXjJK8MjzO/.
On one of the windows of the bus, on the upper deck, one can read those words interspersed with some others and symbols, on a blue background and in white capital letters, which helps them stand out from the rest of the bus. When exploring IL’s electoral manifesto, one of its goals is to develop a “housing policy focused on increasing supply”, as part of a larger goal of “BREAKING THE ECONOMIC STAGNATION” (p. 2). In that document, we also apprehend the same written visual composition, albeit reversed and only with words, on a page highlighting the need to facilitate the construction of buildings for housing. Pointing out that the “bureaucratic burden in the sector is very high”, it clarifies that “[m]uch time is spent between the approval of an investment and the completion of a building, several years in many cases” (p. 84). The plus (“+”) and minus (“-”) signs emphasise and delimit an idea (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2021; van Leeuwen, 2008): more housing and fewer bureaucratic procedures are needed. On the following manifesto pages, they suggest “[p]utting empty state properties on the market” (p. 85) or “[d]ecentralising to relieve demographic pressure in big cities” (p. 86).
Housing as being essential to the economy is therefore instrumentalised (van Leeuwen, 2008). A “liberal” ideology of liberalism is revealed with great clarity, since the party claims to be “‘liberal in everything: in the economy, customs, and politics’” (Pinto, 2020, cited in Matos & Ribeiro, 2024, p. 40). This is in line with the motto under the metonymy (cf. Ribeiro, 2024a) and personification “‘ACCELERATE PORTUGAL’”, present both on the vehicle and in the party’s electoral manifesto. Drawing on Cunha and Cintra (1997), another phrasal construction also stands out as an example: the adverbial locution of time “THIS TIME”, the use of the verb ‘to be’ as an affirmative of the near future (Araújo, 2005), through the verb form ‘[IT] IS’, and the adjective “LIBERAL” contribute to referring to both the party and its political ideology.
That political ideology is linked to (economic) liberalism as opposed to others, such as socialism and others defended by parties on the left. Among other things, liberalism contends the idea of less state intervention in the economy, enabling the market to function more liberally. Recently, the former IL president Rui Rocha argued that “his party wants a constitutional revision that will make it possible to ‘end socialism’”. In this regard, the IL’s program reads: “The state is not simplifying itself and the lives of the Portuguese are becoming increasingly complicated. The state lives off of bureaucracy and bureaucracy feeds the way of life of the corrupt.” (p. 1). Considering what has been listed so far, this association implies an aggregation (‘bureaucratic welfare state as a promoter of corrupt people’) and a genericisation as discursive strategies (van Leeuwen, 2008). In addition, it leads to the production of a populist discourse that is created with this type of statement. According to Estrela Serrano, populism consists of “an antagonism between a corrupt elite and the pure and incorruptible people represented by a charismatic leader” (2023, p. 5). The author adds that it is contextually situated and “cuts across ideological, geographical and historical boundaries”, taking “a myriad of forms, oftentimes contradictory” (p. 5).
These types of political acts are nothing new for this party. Marco Matos and Vasco Ribeiro discuss IL’s communication, within its intertextuality between the digital and the physical, and how it is closely allied to entertainment, humour, and analogies with popular culture. Through studies of billboards, the authors state that there is “a great use of pop references by the party, which make the communication closer to the voters’ imagination” (p. 55). In the campaign for the European elections, IL had already used a similar strategy with a bus to garner votes and public trust. Another occasion, at a different university event, is showed below.
Figure 3. Screenshot of an IL’s post on Instagram about being present at Coimbra’s Queima das Fitas in 2024, within the last European Parliament election, with the aforementioned vehicle. Captured on May 11, 2025, at 12.09 am.
Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Z0IBaMC3m/?igsh=d2RzcnhrZ25pMTBm.
From the point of view of digital reach, such as the one under study here, the impact is considerable. On Instagram, one of the most widely used platforms in Portugal, a video summarising the event (figure 2) has over 19,000 views [4]. Also on Instagram, a previous video of the IL leader in a bar area close to where the bus was parked (figure 4) had over 243,000 views [5].
Figure 4. Frame of a film clip announcing the presence of Rui Rocha, near the Gualtar bypass, in a bar area close to where the bus-bar was parked. Captured on May 11, 2025, at 12.38 am.
Available at: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJW1LioMyHK/?igsh=aWR2ZXpxZmtiM2U4.
Under the circumstances and contexts described above, the bar-bus incorporates and produces a set of meanings aligned with IL, which shows the relevance of understanding what can be more expected or more unexpected than everyday manifestations can trigger. The expected and the unexpected are intertwined: the colours and their connection to IL, the political ideals associated with IL and political action as a promoter of a partisan-political ideology based on liberalism, a bus as a prompter of political action, a bus-bar, which offers beers and triggers get-togethers, or the informal approach of the leader of IL to citizens, especially young people. The vehicle can be used to transport people and make trips, either more frequently or more occasionally, but also to politically mobilise voters and their intentions, through targeted straightforward offers, such as a glass of beer and a chat. Politics is being done. Bar-buses are helping out.
Pedro Eduardo Ribeiro (CECS/Universidade do Minho)
Published in July 30, 2025
Notes:
[1] This designation is conceived as a neologism, even though there is an already existing one without hyphen of a commercial establishment with the same name, coincidentally also in Braga: https://www.instagram.com/autocarrobar/.
[2] The official name in Portuguese of this party is Iniciativa Liberal. This article’s author suggests keeping the common abbreviature used in Portuguese, mostly by many media outlets.
[3] A proposal from the theoretical and empirical literature based on Ribeiro (2024a; 2024b) is used here for the analysis. This orients an analysis of some of those texts, which are also semiotic products, produced by the respective semiotic materials (Ledin & Machin, 2018). Drawing on Ribeiro’s (2024a) proposal, they are divided into multimodal and, also necessarily multimodal, contextual resources. As for the former: “(…) participants, actions and indexical links (what is suggested to be revealed, thought and felt, said and expressed and what actions are conducted), colour, form(s), salience, delimitation, setting and objects” plus “objects as subjects, grammar and lexicon, actors summoned and discursive strategies” (p. 95). As for the latter: “intertextual, sociocultural, political, (…) and media” (p. 95). Ribeiro’s book chapter (2024a) was previously published in Passeio as a micro-essay.
[4] View number retrieved on May 11, 2025, at 12.52 am.
[5] View number retrieved on May 11, 2025, at 12.52 am.
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