Picturing protest: visuality, visibility and the public sphere

Aims and Scope: This special issue is concerned with how and why certain visual images picturing protest events and social movements are rendered visible or invisible in the public sphere. ‘Picturing Protest’ responds to the growing interest in a new protest culture and new ways of ‘doing politics’, ranging from Arab revolts to the Occupy Movement, the Indignados and anti-austerity protests in Europe. Since 2011 these new activisms have gained momentum in media and scholarly debates. Contemporary activisms are seen as powerfully tied in to the possibilities that social media platforms and web 2.0 technologies offer to those involved in practices of dissent in physical squares and streets as much as in virtual environments. Of special interest here is how new forms of political participation and the practice of dissent go in tandem with the widespread use of visual images and internet memes facilitated by technological devices with documentation facilities (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and social network technologies (Bennett and Segerberg 2012). Iconic images like the image of dying Neda, a 26-year-old Iranian woman killed by a sniper bullet during a protest event, go viral in social media platforms and have the power to galvanize the attention of global publics. Hence, this new protest culture demands for a different approach in the study of how protest images are constituted, analysed, interpreted and circulated in both old and new media environments. Taken all together, the different contributions ask how and why activists, photojournalists, citizen journalists and journalists use protest images, ranging from maps, posters, to amateur and professional photographs, to communicate with a range of audiences within and beyond nationally-defined public spheres. The contributors do so by employing theoretical tools and methods that originate from within a variety of disciplines, including media and communication, political science, sociology, semiotics and art history. In pursuing their research, the contributors draw on a variety of political contexts, including Spain, Portugal, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Greece, Germany, Italy, Austria and the UK. One of the key aims of this special issue is to overcome the overemphasis on the intended symbolic meanings of protest images (Philipps, 2011), by directing the analytical lens to issues of image production and diffusion. It does so to show how certain visual images, and not others, end up circulating in a range of traditional and new media environments.