ImagiDem has carried out extensive theoretical work to develop the theory of visual politics. Based on work developing further and combining recent pragmatist theorizing and cultural sociological concepts, we have coined the concept of fame democracy as well as that of visual politicization. We have explored and theorized the political potential of being visible and invisible, the new forms of power in crafting and organizing visibility, and the historical trajectories that undergird these.
The project has carried out ten separate entities of ethnographic fieldwork, five in Finland, two in France, two in Portugal, and one in Germany, among, partly respectively, partly intertwined, groups of actively engaged youth in activist settings, and marginalized youth in proto-political settings. The project has developed a new method to study activism ethnographically in the social media era: the snap-along ethnography. This method has been used and further enhanced in fieldwork during the project. The ethnographic works have provided numerous analyses of means of visual politicization and the consequences of increasing visuality to democratic practices.
The project has developed an ethnography-aided AI program that provides a method to investigate large masses of images, finding out the prevalence of different categories of visual political action they portray. The program is in development to become an application, distributed for wide use among scholars and eg. journalists.
The project has collected a large image archive data from Finland, France, Portugal and Germany between late 19th and early 21st century, and analyzed it to map the changes in visual politics before the emergence of online visuality.
ImagiDem has provided research training to five doctoral researchers – Vasilis Malthezos, Jenni Kettunen, Maija Jokela, Heini Salminen, and Juulia Heikkinen (with one PhD gained in 2024, one expected this year, and two expected within the next two years) and three trainees, Juulia Heikkinen, Minja Sormunen, and Alina Faizy. The project has provided the career ascension of two researchers, Taina Meriluoto and Carla Malafaia from early post-doctoral level to, respectively, senior researcher and tenure track positions. Both have since the project secured funding of their own and began building their own research teams.
The study results have been disseminated through teaching in several universities in Finland, US, Norway, France and Portugal.
The project’s findings have been disseminated to both the academic community and the general public, the former through over 80 conference presentations in more than ten countries as well as publications (see below), the latter through general public events, social media publications, media appearances, a podcast series (
https://csd.fi/demokratian-paikat-podcast/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)) as well as a video presentation of the project’s aims and findings (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdhNG_RqpEM(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)).
The project has produced altogether 42 publications, in addition to 8 articles and a book manuscript (about 80% accomplished) pending.
