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- Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari
(author)
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Producing Image Activism After the Arab Uprisings Introduction
- 2020
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In: International Journal of Communication. - 1932-8036. ; 14, s. 5010-5020
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A decade after the outbreak of the Arab revolutions, what remains of the political promise of cameras everywhere to permit activists and protesters in the region revived forms of agency, self-expression, and connectivity? This Special Section aims to provide a better understanding of what the opportunities and constraints are for practices of grassroots digital image activism within today's political struggles in the Arab world. Together, the articles track the current conditions of possibility for Arab digital image activism to actualize counterdominant practices of capturing, mobilizing, and archiving visual documentation of people's struggles for justice in the region. Where traditional media studies tend to focus on insurgent image making as content rather than as embodied and embedded practices, the contributions here feature a range of concrete, contextual, and innovative repertoires of activist video and photography practices. They specifically detail the struggle between resistance and control, between efforts to maintain the radical potential of grassroots forms and practices image- making in the region, and the renewed hegemonic threats and pressures of co-optation, commodification, and censorship.
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| 3. |
- Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari
(author)
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The “Image-as-Forensic-Evidence” Economy in the Post-2011 Syrian Conflict : The Power and Constraints of Contemporary Practices of Video Activism
- 2020
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In: International Journal of Communication. - 1932-8036. ; 14, s. 5072-5091
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- My study brings a practice perspective to the study of video activism, specifically seeking to bridge a focus on activist agency with attention to structure. Hence, it provides a critical lens on new economies of image developing in relation to the post-2011 Syrian conflict, to theorize both the agency-the practices, aspirations, and need-of local Syrian videographers and how it is challenged and restricted by structure: that is, the dynamics of ruling perpetrated both by commercial platforms (particularly YouTube), that are now stepping up censorship of video, and by the international justice movement, that is now rushing to harness the probative power of online eyewitness video for grave crimes investigations and prosecutions. Based on semi- structured interviews with four key actors in the international justice movement and 15 Syrian videographers, the study advances our conception of the potentials and challenges of digital camera-practices for civic agency and activism within a contested global media space of ever-increasing exploitation, commodification, and censorship.
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| 4. |
- Najem, Chafic T., 1991-
(author)
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Smuggle, Frame, Shoot : Illicit Media Practices and Visual Insurgency from Lebanese Incarceration
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This research explores prisoners’ illicit use of digital-media technology during their incarceration in Lebanon. Prisoners smuggle cellphones and access internet and telecommunication connection to produce and mediate videos, images, and voice recordings documenting quotidian experiences of imprisonment, violent events, and the COVID-19 Pandemic inside the notorious and overcrowded Roumieh Central Prison. Fragmentary prison amateur cellphone media messages make their way from behind bars to various media ecologies, from social media to local and international news-media platforms, where they are (re)mediated and often appropriated to feed partisan and sectarian media narratives. In this dissertation, I investigate prison cellphone recordings and their political and testimonial possibilities by tracing the prison media practices responsible for their production and circulation. Influenced by Amel’s (1976, 1988) intellectual project of theorizing from the periphery and the lo popular approach to theorizing media with and from individuals’ media practices in their territory (Martín-Barbero, 1998), I propose a framework for the conceptualization of prisoners’ illicit use of digital-media technologies and the recordings they produce as media from the prison. Based on a foundation of media-practice theory, more specifically the articulation of activist media practices and mediation theory (Martín-Barbero, 1993; Mattoni, 2012; Mattoni & Treré, 2014), I introduce three overarching and overlapping conceptual themes: media witnessing, media mobilization, and vulnerability in resistance. Using this theoretical framework, I examine the categories, characteristics, and modes of framing reflected in prison cellphone recordings, explore their alignment with mechanisms of mobilization and organized protest, and consider them as visual and sonic recorded testimonies that document and communicate personal impressions and the conditions of quotidian life in confinement. The analysis draws on a qualitative, multi-method approach combining visual analysis and contextual interviews. Location- and event-based searches were used to systematically collect a corpus of prison cellphone recordings remediated between 2011 and 2022 on Facebook, YouTube, and local and international news-media platforms. I propose the notion of visual insurgency as a step towards understanding the role and function of recordings that are produced and mediated through inherently prohibited media practices. Through the examination of composition, POV, frame, sound, (re)mediation, and the partisan context of Lebanon and the colonial history of its prisons, I trace the illicit media practices responsible for these prison representations. I claim that, through their media practices, prisoners mediate from the prison testimonies of their lived experiences, expose their vulnerabilities to the precarious conditions they exist in, re-claim a sense of mundanity, and incite feelings of affinity to mobilize support. I conclude that prison cellphone recordings are the result of meticulous prison media practices that are intended to actively mobilize support and sympathy, as well as to establish communication networks with affiliates and media personnel. Prison media practices continue to grow as prisoners smuggle digital-media technologies, develop new approaches to framing their testimonies and shooting the precarious environment, stories, performative assemblies, and lived experiences behind bars.
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