Mediated commemoration, affect alienation, and why we are not all Charlie: solidarity symbols as vehicles for stancetaking

Authors

• Anu A. Harju University of Helsinki

Keywords:

mediated violence, commemoration, public mourning, stance, affect, affect alienation, digital media, Twitter

Abstract

Public mourning and collective displays of solidarity after terrorist violence are established cultural practices that bring people together at times of tragedy and loss. While it remains common to gather at the site of tragedy, to construct temporary memorials of candles and flowers in memory of the victims and to come together as community, mediated practices of commemoration have become equally important. Sharing solidarity symbols facilitating connective participation is one of the most prevalent and visible ways of joining in public mourning in digital spaces. One of the most popular solidarity symbols to date is #JeSuisCharlie, created after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, 2015. It has since inspired numerous renditions, including #JeSuisMuslim that emerged after the Christchurch mosque attacks in March, 2019.

This media-ethnographic study focuses on solidarity symbols circulating on Twitter after four terrorist attacks: Paris in January, 2015, and again in November, Beirut in November, 2015, and Christchurch in March, 2019. The study draws on Appraisal analysis to examine the interpersonal dimension of solidarity symbols, specifically, how stance as interpersonal orientation is constructed in solidarity symbols. When the normative reading of solidarity symbols as vehicles for alignment and solidarity is interrupted, they are experienced as alienating or excluding. Approaching solidarity symbols as vehicles for evaluative practices of stance-taking, the paper explores how solidarity symbols function, first, as bonding icons able to construct affective alignment and a sense of community, and second, how these bonding icons construct the reader as aligned with specific ideology, contributing simultaneously to community-building and alienation, where not sharing the dominant frame of mourning manifests as contestation.

The findings reveal, first, how solidarity symbols have the capacity to serve as templates of affect for subsequent tokens; in addition to the iterations replicating the function and form of popular solidarity symbols (like #JeSuisCharlie), there is also a transmission of affect and stance. Second, as individual commemorative acts are always embedded in wider socio-cultural imagination, and therefore cannot escape significations regarding grievability of life, solidarity symbols contribute to affect alienation and not only affective communion. Third, as circulation of solidarity symbols contributes to the visual representation of “us” with an implicit presence of the Other, solidarity symbols can be viewed as struggles for recognition. Solidarity symbols operate within wider regimes of visibility where issues of recognition speak to issues of grievability. It is therefore important to consider the ways in which the meanings embedded in solidarity symbols are constructed and what these meanings are.