Neda, martyrdom and the media event: Death imagery as an iconic memory. (1st December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ibrahim, Yasmin
• Is Part Of: Poster. Volume 3:Number 1/2(2015)
• Page Start: 31
• Page End: 48
• Publication Date: 2015-12-01
• Subjects: Posters -- Periodicals; 741.67405
• DOI: 10.1386/post.3.1-2.31_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2040-3704

Abstract

Death imagery online is a conflicted area of examination. At times it can assume a virality that will change public opinion creating iconic moments where death functions as a transformative device. The Internet with its ineradicable features to preserve content makes death a performance that can be consumed stripped of time and space. Death imagery becomes immortalized on the Internet defying the physical mortality of the body as a site of decay and decomposition. This article examines the death of Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, exploring the entwined notions of witnessing and how the death event courted virality, immortalizing Neda as a global icon. The Internet became a site of double articulation where the act of dying was both contemporaneous and historical – captured, disseminated and consumed non-stop on the Internet. This temporal dislocation of the Internet means death as a media event can be both banalized as part of popular culture and equally consigned to the iconic; igniting affective communities that can domesticate death for collective grieving, communion and agency.