The visual biopolitics of Mariupol: a comparative analysis of Russian and Ukrainian visuals on Telegram

Abstract

How does pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian visual media construct different regimes of visibility through depictions of Mariupol? Visuals play an increasingly important role in how people communicate and generate discourse, especially in conflicts, but the role of visuals in international relations remains understudied. This thesis expands the understanding of this connection by using visual discourse analysis with a biopolitical focus to analyze 20 pictures to analyze this phenomenon in the context of Russia’s occupation of Mariupol. The photos analyzed come from the competing Telegram channels of the current pro-Russian Mariupol City Administration and the exiled pro-Ukrainian Mariupol City Council. This thesis finds that the two channels construct radically different regimes of visibility with their respective pictures by emphasizing different political themes and through how they frame the relationship of Mariupol’s citizens with Russia and Ukraine. The pro-Russian pictures emphasize Mariupol’s unity with Russia and have characteristics of biopolitical paternalism, while the pro-Ukrainian pictures focus on remembrance of Russian crimes and build a negative and necropolitical perspective of Russia’s occupation of Mariupol. These findings provide insight into the important ways that visuals can generate their own discourse which either supports or undermines different authorities and narratives. The process used here can be expanded with a larger sample size for a more comprehensive analysis, or it can be applied to other conflicts, such as between Israel and Palestine, to uncover and analyze visual sources of political meaning which may be missed when using other methods.