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Still and moving images are crucial factors in contemporary political conflicts. They not only have representational, expressive or illustrative functions, but also augment and create significant events. Beyond altering states of mind, they affect bodies and often life or death is at stake. Various forms of image operations are currently performed in the contexts of war, insurgency and activism. Photographs, videos, interactive simulations and other kinds of images steer drones to their targets, train soldiers, terrorise the public, celebrate protest icons, uncover injustices, or call for help. They are often parts of complex agential networks and move across different media and cultural environments. This book is a pioneering interdisciplinary study of the role and function of images in political life. Balancing theoretical reflections with in-depth case studies, it brings together renowned scholars and activists from different fields to offer a multifaceted critical perspective on a crucial aspect of contemporary visual culture.

Around the world millions of people suffer the consequences of financial and economic crisis; as well as the sovereign debt crisis: under impoverishment, unemployment and homelessness, by cuts in the social, sanitary and educational system. The problems that led to the crisis still persist. In this sense it is important the question about how the media attract their audiences, and how they can contribute to the understanding of the crisis, its causes, consequences and possible  resolutions.  This  article  shows  which  documentary  films  made  an  important  contribution  on  the  cinema, television and internet in the mentioned context. This is related to the question, if specific aesthetic forms are particularly suitable for such politic comprehension objectives. The paper examines, on the first place, four of the most successful films in Europe in the range of documentary films on the financial crisis, starting from discourse as rethoric, aesthetic and affective strategies. Let’s make Money (Erwin Wagenhofer, Austria 2008), Capitalism (Michael Moore, United States 2009), Inside Job (Charles H. Ferguson, United States 2010) and Debtocracy (Xpeokpatia, Katerina Kiitidi; Chatzistefanou Aris, Greece 2011).

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys today´s diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.

This article shows in what ways Matthew Ratcliffe's phenomenological theory of existential feelings is relevant to film and media studies. Existential feelings are \"feelings in the body, which are experienced as one's relationship with the world as a whole.\" They are related to other concepts in film theory; however, their relation to films has never been systematically examined. The article discusses how audiovisual media are able to represent, express, and evoke existential feelings, and even work as \"qualia machines\" in making viewers partially share feelings of characters. Focusing on the paradigmatic case of depression and on exemplary films like Dominik Graf's Deine besten Jahre, the article identifies different aesthetic strategies to express existential feelings. Building on that, the article argues that the power of films to evoke related feelings in the viewers is a crucial factor in spreading ideas about how others feel and conveying collective structures of feeling.

Characters are of central importance for our film experience, and they confront us with a multitude of questions concerning their production, structures, meanings, effects, etc. Subjective intuitions do not suffice to answer those questions and to analyze, describe, and discuss characters in differentiated and comprehensive ways. To do this, we need a set of conceptual tools, an infrastructure for argumentation. This article summarizes the central results of my book Die Figur im Film in those respects, starting from a heuristic core model. The \"clock of character\" distinguishes between four aspects of characters: (1) As artifacts, they are shaped by audiovisual information; (2) As fictional beings they have certain bodily, mental, and social features; (3) As symbols, they impart higher-level meanings; and (4) as symptoms they point to socio-cultural causes in their production and to effects in their reception.

Images enter the interactional networks of political conflict in various ways. Often, they motivate political action by evoking emotions and affects. This is evident, for instance, in visual propaganda, images of terror, donation campaigns or activist videos like Kony2012. Aiming to mobilise a movement against a brutal warlord, the documentary made calculated use of cinematic techniques to maximise viewers’ emotional responses. It went viral on social media platforms and was soon watched more than 100 million times. The film moved its audience to donate about $20 million, led to political resolutions, contributed to US support of the Ugandan army and

Similarity identification and ingroup categorization, matching perspectives and goal sharing, synchronicity, joint semantic-perceptual space, mere exposure effect, and other parameters often contribute to an appraisal that is positive rather than negative. [...]the moral evaluation of characters, which is often seen as the essential requirement of affective engagement, is important, but only part of the whole picture. Needless to say, I am not aiming at a comprehensive interpretation. Because of its unreliable ego-narration, morally ambivalent protagonists, violent content, ironic stance, and Brechtian distancing devices, Fight Club is not an obvious example for being close to characters. Edward Norton's average appearance, noticed by several film critics, may help make Jack seem familiar to many viewers. [...]Jack is involved in situations, habits, problems and office politics many Western viewers can recognize. In these cases, the viewer's mental perspective is different in mode than Jack's, but has the same intentional objects and is similar in content. Because the first-time viewer knows only the content of Jack's mental processes, but not their mode, she can initially be tricked into sharing Jack's mistaken epistemic perspective (taking his hallucinated encounters with Tyler for real), then his conative perspective (wanting to know where Tyler is), and finally his affective perspective (being surprised by the revelation that Jack is Tyler).

Around the world millions of people suffer the consequences of financial and economic crisis; as well as the sovereign debt crisis: under impoverishment, unemployment and homelessness, by cuts in the social, sanitary and educational system. The problems that led to the crisis still persist. In this sense it is important the question about how the media attract their audiences, and how they can contribute to the understanding of the crisis, its causes, consequences and possible  resolutions.  This  article  shows  which  documentary  films  made  an  important  contribution  on  the  cinema, television and internet in the mentioned context. This is related to the question, if specific aesthetic forms are particularly suitable for such politic comprehension objectives. The paper examines, on the first place, four of the most successful films in Europe in the range of documentary films on the financial crisis, starting from discourse as rethoric, aesthetic and affective strategies. Let’s make Money (Erwin Wagenhofer, Austria 2008), Capitalism (Michael Moore, United States 2009), Inside Job (Charles H. Ferguson, United States 2010) and Debtocracy (Xpeokpatia, Katerina Kiitidi; Chatzistefanou Aris, Greece 2011). Alrededor del mundo millones de personas sufren las consecuencias de la crisis financiera y económica; como también de la crisis de la deuda soberana: bajo el empobrecimiento, el desempleo y la falta de vivienda, bajo recortes en lo social, en la salud y en el sistema educativo. Los problemas que condujeron a la crisis aún persisten. En este sentido es de importancia la pregunta respecto a cómo los medios atraen a sus audiencias, y cómo pueden contribuir en la comprensión de la crisis, sus causas, consecuencias y sus posibilidades de resolución. El presente texto muestra qué películas documentales de importante contribución en cine, televisión e internet corresponden a este contexto. Esto está en relación a la pregunta, si acaso formas estéticas específicas son particularmente adecuadas para tales propósitos de comprensión política. El artículo examina en primer lugar cuatro de las más exitosas películas en Europa de la gama de películas documentales sobre la crisis financiera, partiendo de posiciones de discursos como estrategias retóricas, estéticas y afectivas. Let’s make Money (Erwin Wagenhofer, Austria 2008), Capitalism (Michael Moore, Estados Unidos 2009), Inside Job (Charles H. Ferguson, Estados Unidos 2010) y Debtocracy (Xpeokpatia, Katerina Kiitidi; Aris Chatzistefanou, Grecia 2011).