::fibreculture:: Digital Media Research Seminar – Ben O’Loughlin

[Ned Rossiter]

Digital Media Research Seminar – Ben O’Loughlin, 15 November

School of Humanities & Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney
http://www.uws.edu.au/hca

Date: Thursday 15 November 
Time: 1-3pm
Venue: EB2.21 Parramatta Campus, UWS, Cnr of James Ruse Drive and Victoria Road, Rydalmere.

All welcome.

Ben O’Loughlin, Royal Holloway, University of London

Post-Fukushima Activism and Global Indignation: The Mediality of Critique in Japan

This paper explores how digital media and political claims-making enabled activists in Japan to link their critique of the Japanese state to activism around the world in 2011, including the Indignados in Spain and uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. The Japanese government was found lacking both in its pre-disaster planning and its inability to form a convincing strategic narrative about Japan’s future that could rally citizens after the 3/11 disaster. In response, activists and opposition voices started to drill down from specific policy complaints to the constitutive arrangements of the polity itself. This is a more abstract level of justification and one that is more easily linked to global struggles. This paper explores how these critical operations were launched from diverse political positions and through different medial practices and media forms, including Sakaguchi Kyohei’s best-selling book How to Build an Independent Country, film by the Radioactivists, the 'Sayonara Genpatsu' (Goodbye Nuclear Power) movement, and digital self-publishing by individual citizens. The paper applies an analytical framework derived from Boltanski and Thevenot’s work to examine how critique and justification operate through media ecologies marked by modulating experiences of distance, proximity, insecurity and uncertainty.

Bio
Ben O’Loughlin is Professor of International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London.  He is co-editor of the Sage journal Media, War & Conflict. His books include Radicalisation and Media: Terrorism and Connectivity in the New Media Ecology (2011) and War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War (2010). He has carried out projects on media and security for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. He has contributed to the New York Times, Guardian, OpenDemocracy, Sky News and Newsweek. Alongside the completion of a book on Strategic Narratives, Ben is currently completing a study of global responses to the 2012 London Olympics with the BBC.