Glocalizing the Digital Image: Ethics, Agency, and Innovative Methods

• Applicant: Dr. Evelyn Runge
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies ; Communication Sciences
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421462167

“Glocalizing the Digital Image: Ethics, Agency, and Innovative Methods” builds on my research project “Behind the Digital Image. Public Photographs on Community Platforms and Twitter as Repositories for Machine Learning and Journalistic Publications” from Phase I of the DFG priority program “The Digital Image”. It expands my research on digital photo sharing towards an inquiry of embodied practices of ethics and agency within digital photojournalism and develops innovative digital visual methods at the intersection of theory and practice, particularly visual (auto-) ethnography. I pursue two sub-projects:a) Ethics and Agency – The Glocalization of the Digital Image: The aim is to explore ethics and agency of digital images (globally/universal) as well as the photographer's experiences (locally/particular). The term glocalization refers to simultaneous global and local developments of the digital image. The project draws from actor-media-theory and theories of the civil contract of (digital) photography (Azoulay). It investigates photojournalists’, photo collectives’, and community-based archives’ embodied practices of ethics and agency within digital photography at the intersection of photojournalism and activism, digital archival efforts, and community/citizen contributions.b) Developing Innovative Methods: Visual (Auto-) Ethnography: this sub-project aims at bridging theory and practice, as well as enhancing digital visual research methods. Triangulating interviews with photo experts – such as photojournalists – through ‘owning’ embodied practices, it serves as a tool to investigate practices of ethics and agency. The potential of digital visual (auto-) ethnography as a qualitative research method lies in the intense interwovenness of the photographer, their perception, the heterogeneity of the respective environment, and their reflexive positionality. The digital image is threefold as research tool, research method, and research object. Embodied practices of ethics and agency emerge in collaboration with photographing vulnerable people; therefore sharing – i.e. participation – is integral. The digital image is stored and located in mobile devices – the digital camera is one of them: technologies become part of the research as “commodities of discourse” (Pink 2007). Practices of ethics and agency recirculate through digital images and their multiple layers of digital transmission (photo agency, personal website, messenger services, photo competitions, microblogging services, intermediaries, traditional media etc.). My proposed DFG-research project uses multidimensional (digital) methods, such as image scraping, in-depth interviews (remote and in person), and field work in visual (auto-) ethnography via participation at workshops with photojournalists. The overarching objective is to develop a framework of the digital image based on embodied experiences, with a stark focus on digital visual ethics, and to enhance innovative research methods.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2172: The digital Image