Project Details
Projekt
Image Protests in Social Media: Internet-Memes, Videos of Police Violence and Interrelations to Art
Subject Area
Art History
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 494996684
Social media have become a central site for political protest. Here, images play a decisive role in shaping digital protest movements. In order to systematically explore the connection between images and protest in social media, the research project focuses on four interrelated dimensions: Protests as image motif, protests directed against images, images as instruments of protest, and images as agents that develop an uncontrollable dynamic within protests. With the concept of "image protests" the project will theorize this constellation and analyze it in three intertwined areas of investigation. Subprojects 1 and 2 are dedicated to two particularly pertinent examples of image protests in social media: Internet memes in political contexts and videos of police violence. Subproject 3 focuses on the appropriation and reflection of these image protests in contemporary art. These focal points make it possible to analyze three very different, yet central modes of digital image protests in their relationality - namely their propagandistic, documentary, and artistic dimensions.In view of the global interconnectedness of communication in the social media age, the project aims to show that political protest cultures worldwide refer to each other and form transnational image practices, aesthetics, and genres. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that image protests are shaped by local contexts and geopolitical as well as economic power structures. The historical perspective of the project intends to show how digital image protests are rooted in comparable practices in the history of art and visual culture in the 20th century. Historical comparisons, however, will also sharpen the view to which extend the specificity of the new image economies in the social networks has led to a radical reconfiguration of political image protests.In methodological terms, the planned research will draw equally on political iconography and affect studies. At the same time, the project faces the challenge that necessarily arises in the study of digital image phenomena, namely that we are no longer dealing with individual images, but with image networks that require a methodologically specific approach. A major focus of the project will therefore be on exploring digital methods and developing an innovative mix of methods for the visual research of social media content.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
