GOVT3999 Lecture 11: week 11 terrorism

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Government and International Relations
• Course: GOVT3999
• Professor: all

Document Summary

This lecture takes up the significance of the global witnessing of terrorist violence through television. Terror is politically amplified through the capacity of the media to create witnesses (audiences) to events. The micro-politics of violence creates fear at a distance amongst those well beyond the reach of actual physical harm. Terrorism is the violence of a highly selective visibility. Violent acts which take place and go unnoticed, or are ignored (eg. victims of torture which amnesty international seeks to have noticed), are almost politically irrelevant in this medium since their suffering cannot be witnessed and therefore authenticated. The lecture explores the r ole of the media in globalising and simplifying the terrorist threa t" (zulaika & douglass). It argues that the use of images of violence and graphic coverage of suffering victims as a way to. Understand" events simplifies events whose complexity and history cannot, and need not, be known or grasped by the multiple audiences.