Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

563

The Occupy Protests: Visual Iconology and Image Events

RC48 Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (host committee)

Language: English

From 2011 onwards many states all over the globe witnessed ongoing protests in the public spaces, that were titled and conceptualized by the protestors, the media and by academic researchers as Occupy Movements because the protesters occupied public spaces for a period of time while creating ongoing “Image Event” for the media. The Occupy Movements created also a kind of democratic participatory community and negotiated their demands face to face or via mainstream media and a variety of new media, especially via social media. 
Visual Iconology is the study of icons, artistic or various western symbolism and images, rooted it the Middle Ages art and architecture interpretation models. It was reconstructed by Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) to a three-phases model of deciphering images: 1) Pre-iconographical description; 2) Iconographical analysis; 3) Iconological interpretation. W. T. J. Mitchell (1985; 1994) developed further Panofsky’s classic model, and through the Visual Turn in social sciences, visual iconology became to be very prominent theory and practice. 
Image Events as conceptualised by John Delicath and Kevin Deluca (2003), are “staged acts of protest designed for media dissemination” which convey powerful images for audiences. Deiter Rucht was developing the concept further ahead (2013). Panofsky’s three-phases interpreting model is very useful for the analysis of protests’ Image Events. 
The session proposes several national Occupy protests case studies of Visual Iconology and Image Events analyses, as portrayed by the media according to the theoretical concepts offered above. Posters: