I Can’t Breathe: How Digital Video Becomes an Emancipatory Technology

Abstract

This grounded theory study explores how bystander digital video distributed via social media documents perceived injustice and serves as an emancipatory technology. Using 30 examples, the study provides insight into how bystander videos impact perceived social injustice with potential visual evidence and how bystander videos ultimately shape larger social movements. We find that potential evidentiary video events break down into eight theoretical areas: instigation, target, place, perceived injustice, tools, witness, potential evidence, and outcomes. We find that while bystander video spread through social media can indeed serve as an emancipatory technology with substantial positive outcomes, care must be taken to avoid oversaturation that could result in desensitization and lower efficacy.

Videoactivismo en redes: Credibilidad, viralidad y emocionalidad

“…Las entrevistas se realizaron presencialmente (n = 2), por teléfono (n = 1) y a través de alguna herramienta de comunicación online (n = 17), entre el 11 de marzo de 2021 y el 14 de septiembre de 2022. Los entrevistados contestaron a preguntas sobre cuestiones relacionadas con la importancia del audiovisual en el activismo y en la transformación social (Gregory et al, 2005;Notley et al, 2017;Papoutsaki, 2008), su relación con los medios de comunicación (Benítez Eyzaguirre & El Azrak, 2015;Candón Mena, 2010: 15;Galán Zarzuelo, 2015;Notley et al, 2015), las consecuencias de un contexto de infoxicación (George et al, 2021;Tedjasukmana & Eder, 2020), así como los tipos de vídeo que producen (Askanius, 2015;Mateos & Gaona, 2015;Notley et al, 2015).…”

#ThisIsMeChallenge and Music for Empowerment of Marginalized Groups on TikTok

“…Collectives and individuals who are marginalized through discriminatory conditions such as racism, homophobia, ableism, gender identity, religion discrimination, ideology, among others (Place, 2021), employ emancipatory technologies such as digital platforms to expose the truth and drive social change (George et al, 2021). In this sense, in this study we considered significant understanding social discrimination and marginalized groups, since the song analyzed was related to coping the social exclusion.…”

“…In this study we built a codebook based on studies about digital empowerment to define the sociodemographic variables of TikTokers (George et al, 2021), on the representation and reflexivity of identity (Meneses-Rocha & Castillo-González, 2016), as well as on hate speech on TikTok (Weimann & Masri, 2020) to analyze the performances (see complete codebook at https:// doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14903064.v1). As we highlighted above, representation referred to unjust or unequal issues (Meneses-Rocha & Castillo-González, 2016), and reflexivity concerned a resilience process whereby a community expresses its value (Givropoulou & Tseliou, 2021).…”

Introduction to the Research Handbook on Visual Politics

“…The image of the British Queen sitting alone at her husband's funeral was one that showed most were all in it together, although this was quickly juxtaposed with images of politicians who did not obey rules. By summer 2020 it was the image of a homicide, a US police officer deliberately kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died, captured on video, which reverberated around the world (George et al, 2021). The spectacle of the Black Lives Matter protests, with their own unique symbolism expressed in posters, graffiti and acts of vandalism against symbols associated with white supremacy, built a narrative of the many fights against racial injustices.…”