Strategic witnessing in an age of video activism

Abstract

Witnessing is infused in ethical and legal discourses that operate within the matrix of knowledge, responsibility, and action. Through an analysis of the non-governmental organization WITNESS, this article shows how this matrix has been at the heart of the development of professionalized human rights video activism that emphasizes goal-driven, tactical and audience-oriented approaches to witness documentation. By professionalizing video activism, human rights organizations like WITNESS configure the act of bearing witness as a form of social activism that differs from longstanding modes of activist involvement. Using the term strategic witnessing to describe this development, this article suggests a conceptual framework through which we can think about evolving forms of media witnessing in the contemporary media moment.

“Citizen Journalism” in the Syrian Uprising: Problematizing Western Narratives in a Local Context

“…The two modes of digital media practice are not mutually exclusive. Witnessing can be strategic (Ristovska, ) and activism can take the form of witnessing and reporting, especially in contexts like post‐2011 Syria where the ruling regime banned journalists from reporting. In other words, the citizen journalist can be a neutral witness or an activist for a civic cause.…”

Imagine All the People: Negotiating and Mediating Moral Concern through Intergroup Encounters

“…Lastly, the deliberate professionalization of the media depiction of suffering through NGOs and organizations such as "Witness," which "trains and supports people using video in their fight for human rights" (https://witness.org), can lead to forms of "strategic witnessing" (Ristovska, 2016). While these images and stories-designed to meet the technical and narrative requirements of mainstream mediacan offer alternative narratives and viewpoints that are usually unavailable through professional journalism (Farrell & Allan, 2015), they can risk appearing manipulative to ordinary viewers, leaving them feeling exploited rather than moved to empathy.…”

The Visual Citizen in a Digital News Landscape

“…This is further evidenced in public disquiet over thorny questions of truth, Communication Theory 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r P e e r R e v i e w authenticity and verification within an "image-driven" culture. Ongoing interdisciplinary dialogues around citizenship and democracy often illuminate this terrain, from the visible staging of electoral politics in the era of "fake news" (Boczkowski & Papacharissi, 2018;Happer, Hoskins & Merrin, 2018), to disputes over the acceptable limits of Photoshop where news photography's indexical claim on the real is concerned (Ritchin, 2013), to the visual surveillance of authorities over publics (and sousveillance of publics over authorities) using digital technologies (Allan & Dencik, 2017;Ristovska, 2016), amongst other pressing debates. Even though image-making has always mattered for civic politics, the shifting imperatives of digitalization throw into sharp relief how everyday practices of seeing are being re-inflected.…”