[ecrea] Summer Course in Visual Media and Global Politics

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

With kind regards


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