Departmental Seminar - Open to all LSE students and staff (in-person) and public (online)

Tuesday 10 May 2022, 5-6.30pm (hybrid event)

6.30-7.30pm Drinks reception

Graham Wallas Room, Old Building, LSE

Registration required for online attendance. Zoom link will be emailed to registered attendees on the day.

Today we live in a society of hyper mediated death. War in Ukraine has brought death to the centre of social and political life in Europe, as well as elsewhere in the world. As a phenomenon, hyper mediation of death is anything but neutral social or cultural phenomenon. It touches upon profound ethical, moral and political questions related to a variety of issues including hierarchies associated with the value of life as well as questions concerning whose suffering and death are worth public mourning or who can claim hero or witness positions in the current communication environment shaped by information warfare. In this highly digitalized media war, death is not only present, but weaponized at multiple levels. This condition invites scholarship to examine issues of belonging, solidarity and compassion, but also instrumentalization, manipulation or even banalization of death in the present society characterized by ubique digital media saturation.

This event on war, death and mediation addresses the topic from above mentioned perspectives and builds on the work of invited speakers.

Speakers

Johanna Sumiala, Associate Professor and Senior LSE Visiting Research Fellow (University of Helsinki) has studied widely intersections between media, death and society in different media contexts and from diverse angles. In her work Sumiala places special emphasis on digital ritualisation of violent and disruptive death in the present-day hybrid media environment and society and the role of ordinary people in those practices. Sumiala’s new book on the topic is titled Mediated Death (Polity).

Dr Tal Morse, LSE PhD Program alumni, Adjunct Lecturer at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem and Visiting Research Fellow at Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath (UK) is a scholar whose work covers themes including death and journalism in global crisis situations as well as digital death. His latest book is titled: The Mourning News: Reporting Violent Death in a Global Age (Peter Lang).

Professor Mirca Madianou, Goldsmiths College, University of London, serves as a commentator and discussant in the event. Dr Madianou has worked extensively on topics connected with digital technologies, humanitarianism, suffering and disasters in diverse media and global contexts.

For queries, email media.events@lse.ac.uk.

War, Death and Mediation