Activists' visibility acts of citizenship and media (mis)representation of BLM

• Published in: European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology
• Main Authors: Milman, Noa, Doerr, Nicole
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Black Lives Matter; colonialism; media; race; statues; Visual analysis; Greenland
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/activists-visibility-acts-of-citizenship-and-media-misrepresentation-of-blm(81719a07-90cc-4d5f-bd9b-6db04d00bf41).html; https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2023.2187427

This paper takes a novel approach to studying the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that emerged in the summer of 2020. Drawing on multimodal qualitative visual analysis methods, we study acts of deliberate altering and erasure of statues that represent heroes of colonialism in Greenland and Denmark. The paper conceptualises these actions as ‘visibility acts of citizenship’ in which racialised minorities claim their symbolic space in the public sphere and criticise racialized and gendered structures of oppression. We then provide a detailed visual and textual analysis of conservative Danish media representations of the protest. This allows us to show how the media (mis)represented protesters’ actions, and its response to accusations of racism and calls for change. Thus, we extend the literature on visual analysis of protest by including not only activists’ visual acts but also the visual responses of mainstream conservative media to the movement.