Thursday, March 15, 2012, 3:30-5:00 p.m., Ferrier 230
Camilla Haavisto, a visiting post-doctoral scholar from the University of Helsinki, will be presenting an ongoing study that focuses on the media representation of one of the world’s poorest countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As part of her research, she asks whether media representations can construct (global and local) compassion for, and identification with, a distant-other-in-need. By presenting research that deals with the media visibility given to two documentary films about the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Kinshasa Symphony (2010) and Blood in the Mobile (2010) – Haavisto uncovers some of the narrative elements employed by the mainstream media and online discussants in Finland, Denmark and the United Kingdom when dealing with the aftermath of the Second Congo War. The study shows how, by framing stories from the Global South within the horizon of relevance for the Western spectator, the media can provide spaces for compassion, identification and eventually action. The study also illustrates that, in times when regular foreign news-reporting fails, documentary films can create (if only temporarily) a sense of communion with distant others.
Camilla Haavisto is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Helsinki in Finland where she received her Ph.D. in communication studies in 2011. Her thesis examines the public debate on migration and integration in the context of Finland, highlighting how belonging and cultural citizenship are constructed in the media, as well as by newspaper readers. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill. Her current projects deal with media, ethnicity and migration in the areas of racial profiling in the newsroom, and the mediatisation of humanitarian crises in the Global South.