The social visuality of distant suffering How social media create new boundaries of visibility

Images of distant suffering depict people whose hardship the observers do not share or experience directly. As such images circulate online, social media grant them a particular visuality that reflects the attention economy governing this space. Social media make these images —depicting loss, suffering, protest or the hardship of revolution, and refuge— part of their ‘metrified machinery’, designed to commodify and standardize sociality into countable clicks, likes, and views. I investigate how the prominent affective affordances —hashtags, buttons, and image-based posts— and their user practices shape the visuality of distant suffering of three social media platforms. Clicks, likes, and views not only create economic value but also elevate and subdue content. The overarching question guiding the thesis is: How do social platforms’ affective affordances and user practices shape the visuality of suffering? The research consists of three case studies into Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and contributes to the theorization of social media photography and distant suffering, while taking on a critical approach toward platform affordances. Methodologically, the studies contribute to demonstrating novel methodological protocols for analyzing networked visual content. These protocols allow for the study of image data in quali-quantitative ways, accounting for both compositional elements as well as networked contextualization of meaning. The findings shed light on how the commercial ranking mechanisms of these platforms perpetuate existing power asymmetries, standardize complex sociality at the expense of particular emotional expressions, and move profound critical voices, pertaining to structural causes of suffering, out of sight.