Sharing the Insecure Sensible: The Circulation of Images of Roma on Social Media

Abstract

Ivasiuc draws on a digital ethnography of material shared by a neighbourhood patrol in Rome on social media, and argues that the spectacle of Facebook-sharing has the triple effect of obfuscating the obscene inclusion of the Roma, multiplying insecurities by reproducing and circulating stereotypical representations of threat embodied in immigrants and the Roma, while simultaneously building a community grounded in fear and hate. Such practices constitute a complex of securitarian visuality in which security becomes a powerful principle of social sorting, transforming social relations in the neighbourhood, and legitimizing the subordination and exclusion of those constructed as threatening ‘others’. Ivasiuc builds upon Mirzoeff’s ‘complex of visuality’ to expand its theoretical relevance at the level of everyday interactions in local settings.

I am grateful to Huub van Baar, Regina Kreide, Václav Walach, and the participants of the conference ‘The Politics of Security: Understanding and Challenging the Securitization of Europe’s Roma’, held in Giessen, Germany, in June 2016, for very helpful comments on an earlier version. The research which has made this work possible took place within the project ‘Dynamics of Security: Forms of Securitization in Historical Perspective’ (SFB/TRR 138), financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG).