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.

Booklet of the CRC 1171: Affective Societies.

Oct 30, 2024

Kerstin Schankweiler is Fellow at the CRC "Affective Societies"

People are taking photos of the painting of Mona Lisa which is smeared with cake

Sep 30, 2024

New text published: "Die Letzte Generation im Museum" by Kerstin Schankweiler

‘Bildet Netze’ is written in capital letters in the centre of the picture. A hand reaches for the ‘B’ from the left edge of the picture. From the bottom right corner, a hand is spraying with a spray can. Colourful triangles come out of the can.

Sep 05, 2024

Save the date: Verena Straub at the conference ‘Bildet Netze’ on 13 September.

"Democracy wall" in Hongkong with variations of the pepe the Frog meme

Memes as Political Image Practice

Memes are more than funny images circulating the web. In the context of political protests, they serve complex communicative functions. Which aesthetics, which platforms and algorithms render memes politically effective? Which methods can we employ to analyse memes as image-text networks in the context of visual culture?

Videos of Police Violence

Videos of police violence have a particularly mobilising force in social media. Up until now, videos showing violence against migrants have received little attention. What are the characteristic perspectives and the distribution channels of these images? Can we determine iconographic patterns and can we situate them historically?

shoulder view over person filming with cell phone

References to Contemporary Art

Image protests and contemporary art are linked in multiple ways. Artists negotiate, appropriate and reflect upon Internet memes and videos of police violence. To what extent can artistic appropriations serve as a mode of image protest of its own?

The team of the DFG-projecte "Image Protest on Social Media" in the exhibition "Dangerous Border". From left to right: Kay Zeisig, Dr. Verena Straub, Tanja-Bianca Schmidt, Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schankweiler.

Welcome

Since January 2022, our small team consisting of Prof. Kerstin Schankweiler, Dr. Verena Straub, Tanja-Bianca Schmidt (M.A.) and Kay Zeisig 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".

For latest news about the project, our exhibition "Dangerous Border" and our Instagram series #READINGS visit our Instagram-Account.

Image Protests on Social Media

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