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