Digital images and globalized conflict

Abstract

As the number of digital images of globalized conflicts online grow, critical examination of their impact and consequence is timely. This editorial provides an overview of digital images and globalized conflict as a field of study by discussing regimes of visibility and invisibility, proximity and distance, and the multiplicity of images. It engages critically with these interlinking themes as they are addressed in the contributing articles to the Special Issue as well as beyond, asking how genres and tropes are reproduced, how power plays a role in access to images, and how the sheer quantity of conflict-related images raise issues of knowledge production and research. Keywords digital images, globalized conflict, multiplicity of images, operative images, proximity and distance, usergenerated images, visibility Digital media, particularly mobile media, have fundamentally and dramatically altered the role that images play in conflicts by easing access to creating and sharing photographs and videos. Digital images do more than just change the way in which conflicts are represented; conflicts themselves change as the decline in control over image flow contributes to shaping, escalating, de-escalating, and even creating conflicts (e.g. Allan, 2013; Andeń-Papadopoulos and Pantti, 2011; Eder and Klonk, 2017; Mortensen, 2015a; Zelizer, 2010). Over the past decades, the rapid and extensive dissemination of images from conflicts has intensified the struggle for public visibility. This has encouraged competing visual narratives and counter narratives, persistent allegations of falsification and manipulation, yet also resulted in unprecedented access to more 'unfiltered' and subjective images from conflicts, documenting violence, human rights violations, and mundane aspects of daily life in conflict zones. As the title of this Special Issue 'Digital Images and Globalized Conflict' suggests, the role of images in conflicts today is conditioned by their increasingly globalized circulation through digital media. Existing scholarship has persuasively argued that conflicts are now connected across the globe through the dissemination of images via networked technologies (perhaps most prominently; Castells, 2012). Even if images cross regional, cultural, and linguistic borders, however, they are received and interpreted in often divergent and conflicting manners in different social, cultural, and geopolitical contexts, prompting diverse readings, meanings, and actions.

Faceless government: civic action in media photographs during the Venezuelan anti-governmental protests of 2017

“…This is why the opposition needed pictures like these to symbolize affect. Moreover, digital pictures have a crucial role in making a conflict visible or invisible (Blaagaard et al, 2017).…”

“…Interviews with 24 Venezuelan societal actors are also used as background material to help contextualize the photographs. Thus, the article approaches the visuality of conflicts not in the traditional way as propaganda, censorship or news frames, but as a part of the social, which constructs meanings in a dialogic relation between different actors and forms by bringing into play new empirical insights needed in the field (Blaagaard et al, 2017(Blaagaard et al, : 1112(Blaagaard et al, -1113.…”

Images of protest in social media: Struggle over visibility and visual narratives

“…Images are key to rendering protest events and particular perspectives on political contestation visible or invisible. The large quantity of images produced and disseminated by a multiplicity of actors in social media creates challenges for understanding the struggle for visibility during protest events (Blaagaard et al, 2017). Social media tactics for gaining visibility and recognition within the sea of images go hand in hand with tactics of self-censorship to avoid surveillance and control (Uldam, 2018).…”

Visual framing of the protest Against the dictatorship

“…U poslednje vreme, sa porastom značaja vizuelnog izražavanja u javnoj sferi, sve više istraživanja razmatra samo vizuelne okvire ili interakciju tekstualnih i vizuelnih okvira u konstrukciji značenja. Posebno značajna je primena u analizi konflikata (Blaagaard, Mortensen & Neumayer, 2017;Jungblut & Zakareviciute, 2019;Makhortykh & Sydorova, 2017;Ojala, Pantti, & Kangas, 2017;Parry, 2010;Schwalbe, 2006Schwalbe, , 2013, dok je u proučavanju kolektivnih akcija i protesta vizuelno uokviravanje i dalje relativno retko (Batziou, 2015;Corrigall-Brown & Wilkes, 2012;Douai, 2014;Krstić, Parry & Aiello, 2017). Većina novijih studija usmerena je na društvene medije (Bruns & Hanusch, 2017;Neumayer & Rossi, 2018), dok su mejnstrim mediji, posebno okviri snimaka u televizijskim vestima manje zastupljeni (Krstić, Parry & Aiello, 2017).…”