Image Protests on Social Media
What role do images play in protest movements worldwide? To what extent can images be viewed as political actors that not only document, but shape and initiate protests online? The DFG-funded research project investigates the aesthetics, affects and algorithms of contemporary image protests on social media.
© Tanja-Bianca Schmidt
Welcome
Since January 2022, our small team consisting of Prof. Kerstin Schankweiler, Dr. Verena Straub, Tanja-Bianca Schmidt (M.A.) and Camilla Kussl has been researching the topics "Image Protests on Social Media - Internet Memes, Videos of Police Violence and Relations to Art". The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) until December 2024.
Together we will examine how images, protest and social media are interrelated. The term "image protests" refers not only to the representation of protest in images, but also to how images become the cause of protests, how protests are conducted with images, and how images develop their own dynamics and can themselves become actors in protests. Closely related to this is the question of the visibility or invisibility of protests and the economies of attention and power structures associated with them. The concept of image protests reveals how contested the field of the visual is in the context of current protest cultures online.
More about the Project "Image Protests on Social Media - Internet Memes, Videos of Police Violence and Relations to Art".
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