Iconografia digitale contro il terrorismo. Le pratiche sociali all’interno del racconto visuale dopo gli attentati di Parigi del 2015

Abstract

The terrorist attacks against Paris in 2015 marked a change in the representation of reality in relation to society. Analysing the shares on Italian social media it is possible to compose a specific collective imagination against terror, using photography as a primary source of socio-media work. One of the ways to deal with a trauma is undoubtedly the production of images, since this type of activity allows users of social networks to find a place for their selves in events and to reclaim the narrative individually. The iconographic sharing after the attacks shows that how the social media promote a form of action that has its own uniqueness and does not go against the commitment of individuals with respect to a collective mobilization. What emerges from the analysis of the images is a mix of bio-pictures, since they all had a great viral circulation and at the same time determined the formation of multiple images in the sphere of the collective imagination and mass consumption. This type of iconographic sharing has facilitated the construction of a collective emotion: users not only meet and talk about it, but creating communities, real conversational virtual spaces around some iconic acts, and build common cultural practices, in which to recognize oneself.