Rae Maria, Holman Rosa, Nethery Amy
Deakin University, Australia.
Media Cult Soc. 2018 May;40(4):479-495. doi: 10.1177/0163443717746229. Epub 2017 Dec 12.
The act of witnessing connects audiences with distant suffering. But what happens when bearing witness becomes severely restricted? External parties, including the mainstream news media, are constrained from accessing Australia's offshore immigration detention centres. The effect is that people seeking asylum are hidden from the public and excluded from national debates. Some detainees have adopted social media as a platform to communicate their stories of flight, and their experiences of immigration detention, to a wider audience. This article examines the ways in which social media, and particularly Facebook, has facilitated what we call self-represented witnessing. We analyse two public Facebook pages to assess how detainees use such social media networks to document their experiences, and we observe the interaction between detainees, other social media users and mainstream media. Significantly, these social media networks enable detained asylum seekers to conduct an unmediated form of self-represented witnessing that exposes human rights abuses and documents justice claims.
见证行为将观众与遥远的苦难联系起来。但当见证行为受到严格限制时会发生什么呢？包括主流新闻媒体在内的外部各方被限制进入澳大利亚的离岸移民拘留中心。结果是寻求庇护者被公众隐瞒，被排除在全国性辩论之外。一些被拘留者将社交媒体作为一个平台，向更广泛的受众讲述他们的逃亡故事以及移民拘留经历。本文探讨了社交媒体，尤其是脸书，如何促成了我们所说的自我呈现式见证。我们分析了两个脸书公共页面，以评估被拘留者如何利用这些社交媒体网络记录他们的经历，并观察被拘留者、其他社交媒体用户和主流媒体之间的互动。重要的是，这些社交媒体网络使被拘留的寻求庇护者能够进行一种未经中介的自我呈现式见证，揭露侵犯人权行为并记录正义诉求。
