Open AccessCity Under Siege: Narrating Mumbai Through NonStop Capture
Author(s) -
Yasmin Ibrahim
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
culture unbound
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.256
H-Index - 7
ISSN - 2000-1525
DOI - 10.3384/cu.2000.1525.09123385
Subject(s) - spectacle , witness , postmodernity , narrative , media studies , social media , modernity , history , sociology , internet privacy , political science , computer science , law , art , literature
When Mumbai became the target of terror in the 26/11 attack in 2008, the events in that city, like other tragic global events in recent years, were narrated through new media platforms. The increasing convergence of technologies and mobile telephony enabled new forms of gaze and the ability to bear witness through these new media technologies. The non-stop capture of events through recording equipment embedded in mobile phones and their connectivity to the World Wide Web constructed Mumbai through civilian narratives and images, and this phe-nomenon was described as the "coming of age of Twitter". Conversely the event raised fundamental questions about the role of broadcasting and protocols in live telecasts of terrorist attacks which have consequences for national security. In narrating the city through the civilian gaze and traditional media the spectacle of suffering in postmodernity becomes an open-ended exercise where the city is both a canvas for showcasing the risks of modernity and new forms of visibilities which emerge from social media and the "act of sharing" content on global plat-forms