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Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres
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 seek...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946660/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29782576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443717746229 |
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author | Rae, Maria Holman, Rosa Nethery, Amy |
author_facet | Rae, Maria Holman, Rosa Nethery, Amy |
author_sort | Rae, Maria |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5946660 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59466602018-05-18 Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres Rae, Maria Holman, Rosa Nethery, Amy Media Cult Soc Original Articles 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. SAGE Publications 2017-12-12 2018-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5946660/ /pubmed/29782576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443717746229 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Original Articles Rae, Maria Holman, Rosa Nethery, Amy Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title | Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title_full | Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title_fullStr | Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title_full_unstemmed | Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title_short | Self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
title_sort | self-represented witnessing: the use of social media by asylum seekers in australia’s offshore immigration detention centres |
topic | Original Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946660/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29782576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443717746229 |
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