A Bio-Political Construction: The Representation of Refugees and Migrants. From the ‘Reel’ to the ‘Real’

The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent information communication technologies affect public perception. An analytical review of innovative methods and applications of ICT’s will be made. A deep analysis comparing local and global mainstream media coverage will be used to gauge the effects of the normalization of war and political strife imagery on public perception. Specifically a subset of migrants (e.g., Palestinian, Syrian) will be examined to assess the effects of this phenomenon on the refugee population in Lebanon. The results of this open-ended research endeavour will advance knowledge in human perception by gaining a better understanding of how communication technologies of the past and those of today compare the influx of Syrian refugees in Lebanon to that of Palestinians. Moreover, it questions how this migration influences the application of laws (that have been on the books but never applied), and what comparison can be made between media coverage of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 as opposed to Syrian refugees in today’s post-modern mobile and satellite connectivity? Specifically, this study’s scope revolves on how media representation facilitates negative or positive feelings towards the plight of refugees.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

El-moutasam Aziz

Laila Manasfi

Ghassan Salah

Conference

Publication date: June 2019

Publication date (Print): June 2019

Pages: 119-125

Affiliations

[0001]The International University of Beirut

Michel Abi Chahla street, Mousytbeh

Beirut-Lebanon

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/POM19.19

SO-VID: 7a6224e7-a703-41a1-8d9a-1c7bc50b5c44

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Politics of the Machine Beirut 2019

Conference acronym: POM2019

Conference number: 2

Conference location: Beirut, Lebanon

Conference date: 11-14 June 2019

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Politics of the Machine

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/POM19.19

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

J. Revel 2014 Identity, nature, life: Three biopolitical deconstructions The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism 112 24
A. BurtonF. John-Leader 2009 Are we reaching refugees and internally displaced persons? Bulletin of the World health Organization 87 638 639per
M. Merlingen 2003 Governmentality: Towards a Foucauldian framework for the study of IGOs Cooperation and Conflict 38 4 361 384
J. A. Prodnik 2014 A seeping commodification: the long revolution in the proliferation of communication commodities tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 12 1 142 168
C. Minca 2015 Geographies of the camp Political Geography 49 74 83
J. Lechte 2007 Civil identity and ‘bare life': Arendt and Agamben's challenge to human rights
A. D. AndradeB. Doolin 2016 Information and communication technology and the social inclusion of refugees Mis Quarterly 40 2 405 416
H. Foster 1995 The artist as ethnographer? The traffic in culture: refiguring art and anthropology 302 309
E. Stepanova 2011 The role of information communication technologies in the “Arab Spring” Ponars Eurasia 15 1 1 6
J. BaranoffR. I. GonzalesJ. LiuH. YangJ. Zheng 2015 April Lantern: Empowering refugees through community-generated guidance using near field communication In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 7 12 ACM
B. Bennett 2018 Becoming refugees: Exodus and contemporary mediations of the refugee crisis Transnational Cinemas 9 1 13 30
L. Leung 2010 Telecommunications across borders: Refugees' technology use during displacement Telecommunications Journal of Australia
E. Bjorgo 2000 Refugee camp mapping using very high spatial resolution satellite sensor images Geocarto International 15 2 79 88
M. O'Neill 2008 May Transnational refugees: The transformative role of art? In Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung = Forum: qualitative social research 9 2 59 Freie Universität Berlin
N. Sawhney 2009 June Voices beyond walls: the role of digital storytelling for empowering marginalized youth in refugee camps In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 302 305 ACM
M. A. LodhiF. R. EchavarriaC. Keithley 1998 Using remote sensing data to monitor land cover changes near Afghan refugee camps in northern Pakistan Geocarto International 13 1 33 39
M. JohnsonG. EvansZ. MohamedA. L. Caress 2006 The development and evaluation of alternative communication strategies to facilitate interactions with Somali refugees in primary care: a preliminary study Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics 14 3 183 189
Marie GillespieLawrence AmpofoMargaret CheesmanBecky FaithEvgenia IliadouAli IssaSouad OsseiranDimitris Skleparis 2016 Mapping Refugee Media Journeys: Smartphones and Social Media Networks 10.13140/RG.2.2.15633.22888
Data2.unhcr.org 2019 Situation Syria Regional Refugee Response [online] Available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/71 14 Oct 2019

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] J. Revel 2014 Identity, nature, life: Three biopolitical deconstructions The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics, and Neoliberalism 112 24

[2] A. BurtonF. John-Leader 2009 Are we reaching refugees and internally displaced persons? Bulletin of the World health Organization 87 638 639per

[3] M. Merlingen 2003 Governmentality: Towards a Foucauldian framework for the study of IGOs Cooperation and Conflict 38 4 361 384

[4] J. A. Prodnik 2014 A seeping commodification: the long revolution in the proliferation of communication commodities tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 12 1 142 168

[5] C. Minca 2015 Geographies of the camp Political Geography 49 74 83

[6] J. Lechte 2007 Civil identity and ‘bare life': Arendt and Agamben's challenge to human rights

[7] A. D. AndradeB. Doolin 2016 Information and communication technology and the social inclusion of refugees Mis Quarterly 40 2 405 416

[8] H. Foster 1995 The artist as ethnographer? The traffic in culture: refiguring art and anthropology 302 309

[9] E. Stepanova 2011 The role of information communication technologies in the “Arab Spring” Ponars Eurasia 15 1 1 6

[10] J. BaranoffR. I. GonzalesJ. LiuH. YangJ. Zheng 2015 April Lantern: Empowering refugees through community-generated guidance using near field communication In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 7 12 ACM

[11] B. Bennett 2018 Becoming refugees: Exodus and contemporary mediations of the refugee crisis Transnational Cinemas 9 1 13 30

[12] L. Leung 2010 Telecommunications across borders: Refugees' technology use during displacement Telecommunications Journal of Australia

[13] E. Bjorgo 2000 Refugee camp mapping using very high spatial resolution satellite sensor images Geocarto International 15 2 79 88

[14] M. O'Neill 2008 May Transnational refugees: The transformative role of art? In Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung = Forum: qualitative social research 9 2 59 Freie Universität Berlin

[15] N. Sawhney 2009 June Voices beyond walls: the role of digital storytelling for empowering marginalized youth in refugee camps In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 302 305 ACM

[16] M. A. LodhiF. R. EchavarriaC. Keithley 1998 Using remote sensing data to monitor land cover changes near Afghan refugee camps in northern Pakistan Geocarto International 13 1 33 39

[17] M. JohnsonG. EvansZ. MohamedA. L. Caress 2006 The development and evaluation of alternative communication strategies to facilitate interactions with Somali refugees in primary care: a preliminary study Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics 14 3 183 189

[18] Marie GillespieLawrence AmpofoMargaret CheesmanBecky FaithEvgenia IliadouAli IssaSouad OsseiranDimitris Skleparis 2016 Mapping Refugee Media Journeys: Smartphones and Social Media Networks 10.13140/RG.2.2.15633.22888

[19] Data2.unhcr.org 2019 Situation Syria Regional Refugee Response [online] Available at: https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria/location/71 14 Oct 2019

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