Chromatology of security: Introducing colours to visual security studies

Andersen, Rune; Vuori, Juha A.; Guillaume, Xavier

doi:10.1177/0967010615585106

Cited by 31 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Colour is key to the expressive function and feel of a multimodal text, often evoking strong emotions (Kress and Van Leeuwen, ) and even indexing ‘an era, a culture, an institution’ (Van Leeuwen, , p. 65). Hence, studying colour is studying the social (Andersen et al, ). Thus, the colour red on the webpages connotes the bold, confident, energetic and striving individualized entrepreneurial self of neoliberalism.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While theorists have analysed postfeminist representations of make‐over programmes and films, with a specific focus on plot, formats and discourses, a few scholars stress that postfeminist femininities are depicted visually and, in particular, are colour‐coded. Indeed, colour partakes in the invocation and construction of gender roles and attributes (Andersen et al, ). In particular, saturated, bright primary colours — especially pink — are used in popular culture to articulate meanings about postfeminism and femininity (Hamad, ; Koller, ; Montoro, ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Postfeminist Stylistics, Work Femininities and Coaching: a Multimodal Study of a Website

Swan

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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The aim of this article is to examine representations of work femininities on a British website offering coaching specifically aimed at women. It builds on and contributes to studies of postfeminist representations but with a specific focus on work femininities and coaching webpages. Although studies on postfeminist representation have analysed the way young women's embodied and sexualized femininities are depicted across a wide variety of mainstream media, there has not been a study that focuses on the representation of work femininities on coaching websites. My approach matters because feminist authors critique popular psychology and link it to postfeminism and neoliberalism, but as yet studies have focused on self‐help books and magazines and not on newer media. Furthermore, coaching websites are an important medium for circulating postfeminist work femininities and psychological advice, produced through the digital labour of women entrepreneurs. Through my analysis of one website, influenced by feminist social semiotic multimodality literature, this article contributes to postfeminist theory and organization studies by explaining how ‘postfeminist stylistics’ reproduce postfeminist tropes and depictions of relational and individualized entrepreneurial femininities visually and textually.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Postfeminist Stylistics, Work Femininities and Coaching: a Multimodal Study of a Website

Swan

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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“…It thus adds to a small, but growing strand of literature concerned with everyday visual artefacts and representations of security (Andersen et al, 2015;Coaffee et al, 2009;Power, 2007;Shepherd, 2018;Smirl, 2015). Andersen et al (2015), for instance, show that color acts as a "central and efficient semiotic vehicle in many systems of signification that participate in the classification, hierarchization and marking of individuals, groups, ideas, values, and so on, into specific symbolic categories" (p. 442) with regard to security and insecurity. Coaffee et al (2009) observe that architectural counter-terrorism measures in many Western cities provide visual messages that affect how security is perceived by various stakeholders.…”

Section: Visuality and Securitymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Since then, the analysis of visual representations in international politics has become a growing and vibrant field of research (e.g., Hansen, 2011;Heck & Schlag, 2012;Kearns, 2017;Saugmann Andersen, 2017;Schlag & Geis, 2017;Vuori & Saugmann Andersen, 2018). However, the routine visualities that are part of national and international security governance are still less widely analyzed (Andersen et al, 2015;Coaffee et al, 2009). This article takes Mitchell's (2002, p. 170) definition of visuality as pertaining to "everyday practices of seeing and showing" as a point of departure to argue that visual representations play an important role not only in securitization, but also in practices of security that are often treated as "unremarkable, taken-for-granted, or ostensibly natural" (Crane-Seeber, 2011, p. 450).…”

Section: Visuality and Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday visuality and risk management: Representing (in)security in UN peacekeeping

Krahmann

2020

Contemporary Security Policy

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Visuality is a central aspect of everyday security governance. In the recent visual turn in International Relations, however, the more mundane and routine visualities of security have been widely neglected. To address this gap, this article proposes a framework for analyzing the messages of security and risk conveyed by different modes of visual representations, ranging from press photos and educational images to outwardly appearances. Taking the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) as an example, it shows that everyday visual representations reflect and contribute to security risk management in four ways: (1) They assist in the construction of self and other identities with regard to security, (2) they help to identify potential vulnerabilities, (3) they are used to educate people how to detect, assess, and behave in risky situations, and (4) they are employed to deter violent attacks. KEYWORDS Visual; everyday; risk; UN; peacekeeping Visuality is a central aspect of everyday practices of security governance, ranging from color-coded terrorism-risk scales to the outwardly appearance of peacekeeping operations. In the recent "visual turn" in International Relations, however, such mundane and routine visualities have been largely neglected in favor of a focus on visual spectacles and shocking images (Heck & Schlag, 2012, pp. 892-894). This article helps to address this gap by proposing a framework for analyzing the messages of security and risk conveyed by different modes of everyday visual representation in contemporary security risk management. It suggests that visual images and appearances are implicated in security management in four main ways: (1) They assist in the construction of self and other identities with regard to security, (2) they help to identify potential vulnerabilities, (3) they are

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“…My focus on cybersecurity images in this section follows what Bleiker (2001) has termed "the aesthetic turn," wherein scholars in security studies have directed their attention to how film, television, and photography portrayed security themes more commonly analyzed in narrower terms of text and speech. Although the aesthetic turn includes many of the popular culture analyses referenced so far, some scholars in critical security studies focused more narrowly on the role of images in international politics, rather than the visual world generally (e.g., Andersen, Vuori, & Guillaume, 2015;Heck & Schlag, 2013;Methmann, 2014). These works built on the theoretical apparatus provided by Hansen (2011Hansen ( , 2015, who interpreted controversial Muhammed cartoons and Abu Ghraib photos as "icons" that embodied particular conceptions of security.…”

Section: Visual Styles and Imagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cyber-noir: Cybersecurity and popular culture

Shires

2019

Contemporary Security Policy

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Cybersecurity experts foster a perception of cybersecurity as a gloomy underworld in which the good guys must resort to unconventional tactics to keep at bay a motley group of threats to the digital safety of unsuspecting individuals, businesses, and governments. This article takes this framing seriously, drawing on film studies scholarship that identifies certain aesthetic themes as associated with moral ambiguity in noir films. This article introduces the term "cyber-noir" to describe the incorporation of noir elements in cybersecurity expert discourses. It argues that the concept of cyber-noir helps explain the persistence of practices that blur legal, moral, and professional lines between legitimate and malicious activity in cyberspace. Consequently, changing cybersecurity requires not only institutional and technological measures, but also a re-constitution of cybersecurity identities themselves. KEYWORDS Cybersecurity; popular culture; film; threat intelligence; noir; narrative Dark Trace. Digital Shadows. Dark Cubed. Carbon Black. Dark Matter. Many emerging companies in the cybersecurity industry deliberately play on the popular perception of cybersecurity as a nether region, a gloomy underworld in which the good guys must resort to unconventional tactics to keep at bay a motley group of threats to the digital safety of unsuspecting individuals, businesses, and governments. These purveyors of what might be called "cyber-noir"-defined as the incorporation of noir aesthetics and themes into expert cybersecurity discourses-are often dismissed in International Relations (IR) as a mere sideshow, a footnote to more comfortable state-based dynamics. This article does the opposite. It takes the branding of the cybersecurity industry seriously, asking why these companies seek to portray liminality, transgression, and tantalizing opacity. Is it, as a (relatively) viral video of Michael Sulmeyer, former Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Cybersecurity Project, put it,

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Chromatology of security: Introducing colours to visual security studies

Cited by 31 publications

References 36 publications

Postfeminist Stylistics, Work Femininities and Coaching: a Multimodal Study of a Website

Postfeminist Stylistics, Work Femininities and Coaching: a Multimodal Study of a Website

Everyday visuality and risk management: Representing (in)security in UN peacekeeping

Cyber-noir: Cybersecurity and popular culture

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