Dr. Chafic Najem successfully defended his PhD thesis today

Dr. Chafic Najem successfully defended his PhD thesis "Smuggle, Frame, Shoot. Illicit Media Practices and Visual Insurgency from Lebanese Incarceration" at Stockholm University today. The examination committee announced its unanimous verdict on February 24 at 16:10, saying that he had passed.

PUBLISHED: February 24, 2023
 

 

Participants
 

Author of the thesis

Chafic Najem, PhD candidate, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University

Chafic Najem defending his thesis in JMK-salen on Friday afternoon. Photo: Marina Dahlquist © 2023
STOCKHOLM, FEBRUARY 24, 2023. Chafic Najem defending his thesis in JMK-salen on Friday afternoon. Photo: Marina Dahlquist © 2023


External reviewer (opponent)

Anne Kaun, Professor, Södertörn University

STOCKHOLM, FEBRUARY 24, 2023. Anne Kaun in JMK-salen on Friday afternoon. Photo: Marina Dahlquist ©
STOCKHOLM, FEBRUARY 24, 2023. External reviewer Anne Kaun in JMK-salen on Friday afternoon. Photo: Marina Dahlquist © 2023
 

Full bio: Anne Kaun


Examination committee

Mattias Ekman, Associate Professor, Stockholm University
Marwan Kraidy, Professor, Dean and CEO of Northwestern in Qatar
Tina Askanius, Professor, Malmö University
Vanessa Barker, Professor, Stockholm University (substitute)
 

Chafic Najem defended his thesis on February 24, 2023. Photo: Svante Emanuelli © 2023
STOCKHOLM, FEBRUARY 24, 2023. PhD candidate Chafic Najem, Department of Media Studies, defended his thesis "Smuggle, Frame, Shoot" today at Stockholm University. Photo: Svante Emanuelli © 2023


Supervisors

Kari Andén-Papadopoulos, Head Supervisor and Professor, Stockholm University
Malin Wahlberg, Supervisor and Professor, Stockholm University
 

Chair

John Sundholm, Professor, Stockholm University

 

Chafic Najem's thesis

Full title: "Smuggle, Frame, Shoot. Illicit Media Practices and Visual Insurgency from Lebanese Incarceration"

Cover of the PhD thesis "Smuggle, Frame, Shoot" by Chafic Najem © 2023
Cover of the PhD thesis "Smuggle, Frame, Shoot" by Chafic Najem © 2023


Abstract: 

Full abstract (see below) 

More information in (DiVA)

Download the full thesis (DiVA)

Subject: Doctoral thesis in Media and Communication Studies
Language: English 


Abstract

This research explores prisoners’ illicit use of digital-media technology during their incarceration in Lebanon. Prisoners smuggle cellphones and access internet and telecommunication connection to produce and mediate videos, images, and voice recordings documenting quotidian experiences of imprisonment, violent events, and the COVID-19 Pandemic inside the notorious and overcrowded Roumieh Central Prison. Fragmentary prison amateur cellphone media messages make their way from behind bars to various media ecologies, from social media to local and international news-media platforms, where they are (re)mediated and often appropriated to feed partisan and sectarian media narratives. In this dissertation, I investigate prison cellphone recordings and their political and testimonial possibilities by tracing the prison media practices responsible for their production and circulation.

Influenced by Amel’s (1976, 1988) intellectual project of theorizing from the periphery and the lo popular approach to theorizing media with and from individuals’ media practices in their territory (Martín-Barbero, 1998), I propose a framework for the conceptualization of prisoners’ illicit use of digital-media technologies and the recordings they produce as media from the prison. Based on a foundation of media-practice theory, more specifically the articulation of activist media practices and mediation theory (Martín-Barbero, 1993; Mattoni, 2012; Mattoni & Treré, 2014), I introduce three overarching and overlapping conceptual themes: media witnessing, media mobilization, and vulnerability in resistance. Using this theoretical framework, I examine the categories, characteristics, and modes of framing reflected in prison cellphone recordings, explore their alignment with mechanisms of mobilization and organized protest, and consider them as visual and sonic recorded testimonies that document and communicate personal impressions and the conditions of quotidian life in confinement.

The analysis draws on a qualitative, multi-method approach combining visual analysis and contextual interviews. Location- and event-based searches were used to systematically collect a corpus of prison cellphone recordings remediated between 2011 and 2022 on Facebook, YouTube, and local and international news-media platforms. I propose the notion of visual insurgency as a step towards understanding the role and function of recordings that are produced and mediated through inherently prohibited media practices. Through the examination of composition, POV, frame, sound, (re)mediation, and the partisan context of Lebanon and the colonial history of its prisons, I trace the illicit media practices responsible for these prison representations. I claim that, through their media practices, prisoners mediate from the prison testimonies of their lived experiences, expose their vulnerabilities to the precarious conditions they exist in, re-claim a sense of mundanity, and incite feelings of affinity to mobilize support.

I conclude that prison cellphone recordings are the result of meticulous prison media practices that are intended to actively mobilize support and sympathy, as well as to establish communication networks with affiliates and media personnel. Prison media practices continue to grow as prisoners smuggle digital-media technologies, develop new approaches to framing their testimonies and shooting the precarious environment, stories, performative assemblies, and lived experiences behind bars.