The Institute for Multidisciplinary Research in Art (ICMA), in partnership with the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design at the George Enescu National University of Arts, Iași (UNAGE Iași), organised, on 17–19 November 2022, the online international conference entitled V-CYBERCULT 2022 • Beyond Biopolitics: Visual Digital Culture and the 21st Century Disruptive Events.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine flooded traditional and digital media with still and moving images, including news footage, amateur recordings, drone footage, and satellite imagery documenting military aggression, violence against civilians, shelling, damaged and destroyed buildings, and people forced to flee their homes and their country in what has been described as the largest population displacement in Europe since the Second World War. While social media platforms were banned in Russia and information relating to the war became increasingly monitored and controlled, misinformation and disinformation reached unprecedented levels, playing a significant role in the resurgence of wartime narratives across the European Union.

However, such imagery associated with socially and politically disruptive events had already become a defining feature of contemporary visual culture over the previous two decades, following the trajectories of globalisation. Attempts to manipulate, control, redirect, and even capitalise on such visual data had become an integral component of crisis management in relation to military conflicts and public health emergencies occurring beyond Europe. The convergence of bio-, necro-, and psychopolitics, on the one hand, and digitally produced and circulated images associated with socially and politically disruptive events, on the other, raises a series of questions: What are the principal differences between the production and reproduction of such events within the digital media environment? What is their social impact? How have digital media shaped, articulated, and recalibrated political discourse and traditional news media? Which trends and digital policies have influenced the control and dissemination of images through social media platforms? What distinguishes war, pandemics, and other forms of social unrest in terms of their visual representation and circulation? How did digital technologies mediate public discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and shape the behaviour of online communities? How did users contribute to the spread of panic, the emergence of an infodemic, and, ultimately, the construction of a climate of fear? Subsequently, how has digital culture transformed global perceptions of the Russian–Ukrainian war? How are the geopolitical interests and power relations of the European Union and the United States reflected in the contemporary digital mediascape? Finally, what role do digitally co-produced images, such as memes, play in the dissemination, circulation, and critique of information? What forms of civic and political resistance have artists and online communities imagined and enacted in response?

Beyond Biopolitics: Visual Digital Culture and the 21st Century Disruptive Events encouraged engagement with a broad range of topics and perspectives. It particularly welcomed contributions from researchers working on the Y2K phenomenon, the September 11 attacks, the Global Financial Crisis, the Boko Haram insurgency, the Mexican drug war, the Syrian Civil War, the Yemeni crisis, the Tigray War, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian–Ukrainian War, particularly in relation to power relations, visual politics, political aesthetics, the politics of information, biocommunicability, activist media, network society, the state of emergency, social distancing, and memetic warfare. Proposals were invited to address the social, political, economic, artistic, individual, collective, institutional, representational, and technological dimensions of digital interactions and environments.

Ryan M. Milner is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA. His research focuses on internet culture, encompassing subjects that range from internet memes and social media debates to large-scale propaganda campaigns. Through this work, he examines the social, political, and cultural significance of online interaction.

Professor Milner is the author of The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media (The MIT Press, 2016) and co-author of The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online (Wiley, 2017) and You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape (The MIT Press, 2021). He has also contributed commentary to publications including TIME, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, NBC News, and The New York Times.

His research also informs his teaching on mediated communication. He teaches the Department’s introductory course in media studies, as well as advanced courses in media ethics, media production, and research methods. Throughout his teaching, he combines practical examples, digital technologies, and critical discussion, emphasising collaboration, application, and academic rigour.