Global Media, Biopolitics, and Affect : Politicizing Bodily Vulnerability

Knudsen and Stage present both a theoretical framework for understanding and evaluating the role of bodily vulnerability in contemporary media culture and a range of close empirical case studies on such topics as online war commemoration, online protest strategies and illness blogging. In so doing, they explore the relationship between global media, affect theory, and the body as a biopolitical protest tool.

Global Media, Biopolitics and Affect shows how mediations of bodily vulnerability have become a strong political force in contemporary societies. In discussions and struggles concerning war involvement, healthcare issues, charity, democracy movements, contested national pasts, and climate change, performances of bodily vulnerability is increasingly used by citizens to raise awareness, create sympathy, encourage political action, and to circulate information in global media networks. The book thus argues that bodily vulnerability can serve as a catalyst for affectively charging and disseminating particular political events or issues by means of media. To investigate how, when and why that happens, and to evaluate the long-term social impacts of mediating bodily vulnerability, the book offers a theoretical framework for understanding the role of bodily vulnerability in contemporary digital media culture. Likewise, it presents a range of close empirical case studies in the areas of illness blogging, global protests after the killing of Neda Agda Soltan in Iran, charity communication, green media activism, online war commemoration and digital witnessing related to conflicts in Sarajevo and Ukraine.