Hostile visual encounters: fighting to control photographic meaning in the DRC's digital age

Abstract

On 16 July 2013, Simone Schlindwein, a German journalist, used her mobile phone to photograph a conflict-related image in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that later contributed to local riots and to her hasty exit across the border. From the ‘front’, she uploaded the photograph to her Twitter account and caused a melee of virtual and on-the-ground controversy that at record speed came to involve the United Nations, members of the Congolese diaspora, the Congolese army, the M23 rebel army propaganda office, and the residents of the region. This article starts from her image to ethnographically examine the resulting events and responses, both online and in the city of Goma. In so doing, it engages the heated regional debate as to whether the image was objectively captured or if the violence depicted was simply ‘playing for the camera’. Addressing the simultaneous online movement of the image through social media and news sites, the article argues that the combination of the socio-political climate, conflict and the uncontrollable narrative of the image created a perfect storm in which the entangled regional politics suddenly became visible.

Multimodal analysis of disinformation and misinformation

“…van Dijk and P. Bourdieu for their discourse analysis ([73]; with literature cited);one paper drew upon S. Hall’s work for the analysis of media power and class power and on N. Cook’s work for analysis of music ([94]; with literature cited).Seven papers engaged in content analysis while using approaches originating from political communication, sociology, history, philosophy and anthropology, and anchored in: philosophy of language (epistemic activism, resistance, friction) based on work by J. Stanley’s work ([74]; with literature cited);framing analysis (grounded theory) based on works by R. Entman, D. Scheufele, D. Tewksbury & S.D. Reese ([97]; with literature cited);human geography as rooted in anthropology, history and sociology ([85]; with literature cited);cultural sociology (grounded theory) ([68]; with literature cited);theories of cognitive dissonance, parasocial interaction, social identification (grounded theory) ([93]; with literature cited);analysis by considering theories of gendered framing [67];an ethnographic technique, which is document-driven and across multiple sites, is used by Krafft & Donovan [53], based on the principles of Geiger & Ribes 2011.Six papers did not have a clearly defined theoretical and methodological framework [66,77,83,86,87,92]. Out of 22 papers only 12 engaged in multimodal analysis of content which relied on a defined theoretical and methodological framework.…”

“…Reese ([ 97 ]; with literature cited); human geography as rooted in anthropology, history and sociology ([ 85 ]; with literature cited); cultural sociology (grounded theory) ([ 68 ]; with literature cited); theories of cognitive dissonance, parasocial interaction, social identification (grounded theory) ([ 93 ]; with literature cited); analysis by considering theories of gendered framing [ 67 ]; an ethnographic technique, which is document-driven and across multiple sites, is used by Krafft & Donovan [ 53 ], based on the principles of Geiger & Ribes 2011. Six papers did not have a clearly defined theoretical and methodological framework [ 66 , 77 , 83 , 86 , 87 , 92 ]. Out of 22 papers only 12 engaged in multimodal analysis of content which relied on a defined theoretical and methodological framework.…”

“…Six papers did not have a clearly defined theoretical and methodological framework [ 66 , 77 , 83 , 86 , 87 , 92 ].…”