Images of protest have a visceral power to grab our attention. Colin Leach has been studying how we react to different kinds of protest images. For example, an image of many police holding down one protester and an image of many protesters facing off against a few police convey very different messages about who has the power. Both protesters and police have an agenda for how they want to be represented, and this is as old as photography itself. But online news and social media bombard us with more protest images than ever before, so it’s more important than ever to understand their visceral power.
Tag: power
During the Renaissance, a writer could be imprisoned just for claiming that a husband beating his wife should show mercy. It wasn’t that the authorities wanted merciless wife-beatings. The issue was that they understood criticism of a tyrannical husband as criticism of a tyrannical king. English professor Julie Crawford explains how power relations within the home have underpinned political thinking for many centuries.