Encounters between Violence and Media: Introduction

This Special Section on Encounters Between Violence and Media examines how these encounters are circulated, negotiated or contested, or altogether rejected. Violence enters our everyday life in various and unexpected forms from live-streamed mass shootings to news about sexual abuse. This thematic issue brings together scholars from media and communication studies, social sciences, and the humanities with contributions ranging from interrogations of the more visible and often spectacularized violence to the more invisible violence, gendered violence and violence against marginalized groups. Drawing on the philosophical and political science concept of recognition and problematizing regimes of visibility as regimes of power, the articles in this collection examine in what ways the different forms of violence are (in)visible in the media and what implications (in)visibility has for recognition, on the one hand, and marginalization on the other. The empirical contexts range from terrorist violence against marginalized groups to gendered violence and human trafficking. The collection highlights the need to recognize the violence and suffering experienced by those often existing on the social margins.