Global Media, Biopolitics, and Affect: Politicizing Bodily Vulnerability

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. Britta Timm Knudsen is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communication at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her previous books include Enterprising Initiatives in the Experience Economy (co-ed, Routledge 2014), Re-investing Authenticity, Tourism, Place and Emotions (co-ed, 2009). Carsten Stage is Associate Professor in the Department of Aesthetics and Communication, ARTS at Aarhus University, Denmark. His previous publications include "Online a-liveness" in Mediating and Re-Mediating Death (2014) and "Contagious bodies" (co-authored with Knudsen) in Emotion, Space and Society. He is co-editor of Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation.