Suzi Mirgani on “Tweeting Terrorism: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Media Spectacles”

On September 3, 2015, Suzi Mirgani presented her paper on “Tweeting Terrorism: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Media Spectacles” at the Middle East Institute Conference in Singapore. In the paper, Mirgani highlighted how the pervasiveness of mobile technology, social media connectivity, and corporate media network competition mean that many of the recent tragic terrorist attacks against urban, commercial spaces are inevitably turned into global media spectacles. These attacks happen for home audiences in real time to the twin delight of extremists, whose message is reverberated internationally, and the media, which is provided audience share and advertising revenues. The mainstream of capitalism and the extreme of terrorism do not always inhibit each other, but often align symbiotically to produce new markets and new networks. In this paper, Mirgani elaborates on how the conflation of corporate capitalism and terrorism can be most acutely read at the symbolic level in many of the images and recorded footage that emerge during global terrorist attacks.