“Je Suis Charlie” and the Digital Mediascape

The Politics of Death in the Charlie Hebdo Mourning Rituals

Bibliographic Data

ID18958474
AuthorsJ Sumiala (0000-0002-4773-4509, University of Helsinki, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume11
Issue1
Pages111-126
Publication date2017-06-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1736-6518 • E-ISSN: 2228-0987
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/jef-2017-0007
OpenAlexW2726779981
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited22

This article examines rituals of mourning in the digital mediascape in the case of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, 2015. The idea of the digital mediascape draws on Arjun Appadurai’s (1990) seminal work on mediascape and develops it further in the current framework of digital media. Rituals of mourning are approached as a response and a reaction to the anxiety and distress caused by the unexpected violent death of global media attention. The phenomenology of ritual practices in Charlie Hebdo is characterised as multi-layered, relational and coexisting. The article looks in particular at the ritual mourning in association with the message and the meme “Je suis Charlie”. The ‘imagined worlds’ created around the digital circulation of this ritual message are discussed in relation to the idea of the politics of death formed around such fundamental value-laden questions as whose life counts as life and is thus worthy of public recognition of mourning, as Judith Butler (2004) has asked

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