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Summer course in Visual Media and Global Politics

August 5, 2014 @ 8:00 am - August 21, 2014 @ 5:00 pm

University of Helsinki

Summer School 5-21 August 2014

The Discipline of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki is pleased to offer a course in Visual Media and Global Politics in cooperation with the The Helsinki Summer School. The course is a part of the Master’s Degree Programme in Media and Global Communication.

Visual Media and Global Politics, 5 ECTS

The course will be taught by Rune Saugmann Andersen, University of Copenhagen

Synopsis

The course is an introduction to semiotic, discursive and actor-network-based models of analyzing images and discussing how images become able to participate effectively in the political processes surrounding security, war and conflict. The course focus is on three sites where the connections between visual images and global politics are negotiated:

1) What is in the image itself: visual semiotic and post-structural theories of understanding visuality and images,
2) How the image travels, what is done to it and what it does: theories of remediation, media semiotics, actor network theory, and
3) How images become part of politics and which roles they play. Are they part of governing, resisting security, both? Introduction to perspectives on international politics and the role of visual media in both visual culture and international relations.

Learning objectives

This course attempts to give students the analytical apparatus to critically analyse the role played by visual media in contemporary conflict, security politics and resistance to such politics. The course tackles theories by looking at a specific case in every class, making the students familiar with how the theories operate in relation to key visual moments in recent history (e.g. the Zapruder video, Huynh Cong Ut’s Vietnam photo, Carter’s Somalia photo, the Al-Durrah video, 1991 gulf war video, Sept. 11 images, Al-Qaeda videos, Abu Ghraib photographs, 2009–2011 protest videos, WikiLeaks helicopter video, (lack of) images from Bin Laden killing (+Hillary), Syria). This enables the students to discuss not only how different theories can give different readings of the ways in which images work in politics, but it also allows us to dive into both the historical differences and nuances such as

  • photos vs. tv images vs. videos
  • art photography vs. photojournalism
  • mass mediation vs. user-driven mediation.

About the Lecturer:

Rune Saugmann Andersen is working as a researcher at the Center for Advanced Security
Theory at the University of Copenhagen. His current research investigates how the mediatized political acts of today’s international politics can be understood within the securitization framework. It explores the possibilities of image-based communication about insecurity to change security politics, taking into account the relationship between global and national news content.

For more information about the course and registration please see:
http://www.helsinkisummerschool.fi/home/courses/visual_media_and_global_politics

Details

Start:
August 5, 2014 @ 8:00 am
End:
August 21, 2014 @ 5:00 pm
Website:
http://www.helsinkisummerschool.fi/home/courses/visual_media_and_global_politics

Venue

Summer course in Visual Media and Global Politics
The University of Helsinki , Department of Social Research / Discipline of Media and Communication Studies
Helsinky, Finland
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Website:
http://www.helsinkisummerschool.fi/home/courses/visual_media_and_global_politics