Citizens of photography: visual activism, social media and rhetoric of collective action in Cambodia

Abstract

Sokphea Young obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne (Australia), and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University College London (UK). His research interests are on the areas of transnational activism, civil society, visual politics, visual media and development, citizenship, globalisation and development, and political regime and development in Southeast Asia. His research published in

The “Fox Eye” Challenge Trend: Anti-Racism Work, Platform Affordances, and the Vernacular of Gesticular Activism on TikTok

“…Adopting a social semiotics perspective, we attend to the innovative meaning-making practices of TikTok activists and examine how the rise of TikTok activism, as exemplified in this case study, pinpoints the growing significance of audiovisual aesthetics in video activism. By aesthetics, we mean a concept that “transcend[s] considerations of beauty within the realm of visual arts,” but relates to “how the content of images [and videos] invokes judgements and stimulates interactions in the spectators” (Young, 2021, p. 54).…”

Wildlife Photographs: Seeing, Caring, and Learning Through Place-Based Education

“…Photographs provide details that may be missed in verbal or textual descriptions of natural systems, while eliciting emotions about a place (Rodriguez and Dimitrova, 2011;Brantner et al, 2013). Young (2021) argued that when people take or capture photographs, they become "visual citizens, " and when they share these images with their communities, they can promote collective action to conserve their environment. This is consistent with the goals of PBE: to increase students' understanding of the environment while encouraging them to act within their community (Figure 1).…”

Lobbying the Autocrat

“…While the ruling party controls mainstream television and newspapers (Young 2021b), news on social, environmental, and human rights issues is widely circulated by citizen journalists and alternative media outlets. Social media are increasingly used as a platform to mobilize public opinions to tackle social, environmental, and public administration issues (Vong and Hok 2018;Young 2019Young , 2021a. Public attention to environmental and social problems correlates with the trend of increased access to internet and social media.…”

“…20 Through social media, especially Facebook, they envisioned that each reader would serve as an eyewitness to the intended crime and would reproduce and recirculate the (photographic) evidence to their networks. The evidence demanded responses from the spectator (Young 2021a). The more news, images, and videos were created and recirculated on social media, the stronger the issue resonated on the public agenda.…”