Rune Saugmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 270755 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rune Saugmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rune |
| FAMILY NAME | Saugmann |
| SIGNATURE | SAUGMANN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6936-8845 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Photographic Critique Today
Smartphones and video as security articulation infrastructures
Smartphone videos can co-constitute security reality. As smartphones spread in the 2010s, videos of deadly police violence against Black United States citizens became common, and over time these videos co-constituted anti-Black police violence as a security issue, which found its expression as Black Lives Matter (BLM). This article questions the role that smartphones and video play for BLM, and argues that security theory needs a better grasp of …
Visual Appropriation
This article introduces visual appropriation as a method in critical international political thinking and acting, contributing to the evolving repertoire of multiple, pluralist methods for visual analysis of international relations operating in a digital visual environment. We define appropriation as reuse of existing visual material-either in its entirety or in part-without substantially altering the immanent characteristics of the appropriated …
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Seeing like a surveillance agency? Sensor realism as aesthetic critique of visual data governance
Despite the centrality of visual data creation and analysis in security-related governance not only of heavily surveilled battlefields, but of fields as diverse as petty crime, urban mobility and migration, the sensors and systems producing visual data used for security purposes are rarely themselves the focus of close scrutiny. This is surprising as photography, IR, and science and technology studies literature all point towards equipment as bei…
The security captor, captured. Digital cameras, visual politics and material semiotics
Digital cameras are everywhere and play important roles in security and political scenes, yet they remain overlooked in security and IR research where debates on technology and visuality remain separated, often giving the mistaken impression that the digital images that populate scholarship are primarily visual. In this paper, I understand the digital camera as an inscription device that produces digital images, for which the digital qualities ar…
Military techno-vision
Military applications of technologies for enhancing or producing vision play a key role in composing contemporary security, as such technologies are deployed to make security sense of everyday sociality, of battlefields, and of much in between these extremes. In this article, I set out to recompose militarised techno-vision through the public detritus left by its heterogenous development, use, and appropriation. I argue that as an heterogenous an…
Making Peace Visible
Peace is not an absence, but rather a visibly identifiable set of norms. This visualization can take place through internationally recognized signs such as the white flag and the blue helmet. These representations of norms are united in their ability to be distinguished from similar objects or signs through their use of colors. The identificatory use of color avoids confusion between parties embroiled in a conflict, making an organization or envo…
Hallucination as security knowledge - a reply to Steele
This is a reply to:Steele, Brent J. 2017. “Hallucination and intervention.” Global Discourse. 7 (2–3): 201–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1338507
Video, algorithms and security
Digital videos increasingly sustain new and older imagined communities (and enmities), and make battlefields, unfolding terror plots and emergencies public. Yet digital videos mediate security articulations following logics that are radically different from those of journalistically edited media, with consequences for how we should think of security articulation in new visual media. This article analyses how, in digital video, the combination of …
Paint it black
The modern battlefield is a judicial and social space as well as a spatio-temporal designation that has evolved through time. In this article, we argue that the shifts in the social meaning of what the battlefield is — from a ‘deeply social marker of war’s limitation’ (Mégret, 2011: 133) to a hunting ground of a party over its game — can be seen in the colour-use on the battlefield. More specifically, we argue that the shift in the use of colours…
Chromatology of security
The agenda of this article is to highlight how security becomes intelligible, is enacted, contested and (re)appropriated in part through colour use. Even though colours are a natural phenomenon, their meanings are societal products, and part of our constructed visibilities. These can be investigated through chromatology, the study of colour in relation to people. We illustrate this by applying multimodal social semiotics to view highly securitize…
The Ironic Spectator
Engaging the limits of visibility
In this article, we introduce selected photographs in order to engage with their capability for questioning the representational codes dominant in the visualization of security policy and surveillance. We argue that the intangible, abstract workings of state power in connection with security, surveillance and current forms of warfare can aptly be represented and challenged by means of photography. By engaging the limits of visibility, the selecte…
Remediating #Iranelection
When mass protests and violent crackdown followed the 2009 Iranian presidential election, Western mass media found themselves in a precarious situation: eager to report on the unfolding events, but without access to them; save through snapshots and text bites posted to content- sharing sites by unknown users. Basing news coverage on such content challenged journalistic understandings of credibility as produced by professional routines, thus distu…
Chromatology of security
The agenda of this article is to highlight how security becomes intelligible, is enacted, contested and (re)appropriated in part through colour use. Even though colours are a natural phenomenon, their meanings are societal products, and part of our constructed visibilities. These can be investigated through chromatology, the study of colour in relation to people. We illustrate this by applying multimodal social semiotics to view highly securitize…
Engaging the limits of visibility
In this article, we introduce selected photographs in order to engage with their capability for questioning the representational codes dominant in the visualization of security policy and surveillance. We argue that the intangible, abstract workings of state power in connection with security, surveillance and current forms of warfare can aptly be represented and challenged by means of photography. By engaging the limits of visibility, the selecte…
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Video, algorithms and security
Digital videos increasingly sustain new and older imagined communities (and enmities), and make battlefields, unfolding terror plots and emergencies public. Yet digital videos mediate security articulations following logics that are radically different from those of journalistically edited media, with consequences for how we should think of security articulation in new visual media. This article analyses how, in digital video, the combination of …
The security captor, captured. Digital cameras, visual politics and material semiotics
Digital cameras are everywhere and play important roles in security and political scenes, yet they remain overlooked in security and IR research where debates on technology and visuality remain separated, often giving the mistaken impression that the digital images that populate scholarship are primarily visual. In this paper, I understand the digital camera as an inscription device that produces digital images, for which the digital qualities ar…
Making Peace Visible
Peace is not an absence, but rather a visibly identifiable set of norms. This visualization can take place through internationally recognized signs such as the white flag and the blue helmet. These representations of norms are united in their ability to be distinguished from similar objects or signs through their use of colors. The identificatory use of color avoids confusion between parties embroiled in a conflict, making an organization or envo…
Paint it black
The modern battlefield is a judicial and social space as well as a spatio-temporal designation that has evolved through time. In this article, we argue that the shifts in the social meaning of what the battlefield is — from a ‘deeply social marker of war’s limitation’ (Mégret, 2011: 133) to a hunting ground of a party over its game — can be seen in the colour-use on the battlefield. More specifically, we argue that the shift in the use of colours…
Visual Appropriation
This article introduces visual appropriation as a method in critical international political thinking and acting, contributing to the evolving repertoire of multiple, pluralist methods for visual analysis of international relations operating in a digital visual environment. We define appropriation as reuse of existing visual material-either in its entirety or in part-without substantially altering the immanent characteristics of the appropriated …
Military techno-vision
Military applications of technologies for enhancing or producing vision play a key role in composing contemporary security, as such technologies are deployed to make security sense of everyday sociality, of battlefields, and of much in between these extremes. In this article, I set out to recompose militarised techno-vision through the public detritus left by its heterogenous development, use, and appropriation. I argue that as an heterogenous an…
Remediating #Iranelection
When mass protests and violent crackdown followed the 2009 Iranian presidential election, Western mass media found themselves in a precarious situation: eager to report on the unfolding events, but without access to them; save through snapshots and text bites posted to content- sharing sites by unknown users. Basing news coverage on such content challenged journalistic understandings of credibility as produced by professional routines, thus distu…
Smartphones and video as security articulation infrastructures
Smartphone videos can co-constitute security reality. As smartphones spread in the 2010s, videos of deadly police violence against Black United States citizens became common, and over time these videos co-constituted anti-Black police violence as a security issue, which found its expression as Black Lives Matter (BLM). This article questions the role that smartphones and video play for BLM, and argues that security theory needs a better grasp of …
Remediating #Iranelection
When mass protests and violent crackdown followed the 2009 Iranian presidential election, Western mass media found themselves in a precarious situation: eager to report on the unfolding events, but without access to them; save through snapshots and text bites posted to content- sharing sites by unknown users. Basing news coverage on such content challenged journalistic understandings of credibility as produced by professional routines, thus distu…
Engaging the limits of visibility
In this article, we introduce selected photographs in order to engage with their capability for questioning the representational codes dominant in the visualization of security policy and surveillance. We argue that the intangible, abstract workings of state power in connection with security, surveillance and current forms of warfare can aptly be represented and challenged by means of photography. By engaging the limits of visibility, the selecte…
The Ironic Spectator
Chromatology of security
The agenda of this article is to highlight how security becomes intelligible, is enacted, contested and (re)appropriated in part through colour use. Even though colours are a natural phenomenon, their meanings are societal products, and part of our constructed visibilities. These can be investigated through chromatology, the study of colour in relation to people. We illustrate this by applying multimodal social semiotics to view highly securitize…
Paint it black
The modern battlefield is a judicial and social space as well as a spatio-temporal designation that has evolved through time. In this article, we argue that the shifts in the social meaning of what the battlefield is — from a ‘deeply social marker of war’s limitation’ (Mégret, 2011: 133) to a hunting ground of a party over its game — can be seen in the colour-use on the battlefield. More specifically, we argue that the shift in the use of colours…
Hallucination as security knowledge - a reply to Steele
This is a reply to:Steele, Brent J. 2017. “Hallucination and intervention.” Global Discourse. 7 (2–3): 201–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1338507
Video, algorithms and security
Digital videos increasingly sustain new and older imagined communities (and enmities), and make battlefields, unfolding terror plots and emergencies public. Yet digital videos mediate security articulations following logics that are radically different from those of journalistically edited media, with consequences for how we should think of security articulation in new visual media. This article analyses how, in digital video, the combination of …
Military techno-vision
Military applications of technologies for enhancing or producing vision play a key role in composing contemporary security, as such technologies are deployed to make security sense of everyday sociality, of battlefields, and of much in between these extremes. In this article, I set out to recompose militarised techno-vision through the public detritus left by its heterogenous development, use, and appropriation. I argue that as an heterogenous an…
Making Peace Visible
Peace is not an absence, but rather a visibly identifiable set of norms. This visualization can take place through internationally recognized signs such as the white flag and the blue helmet. These representations of norms are united in their ability to be distinguished from similar objects or signs through their use of colors. The identificatory use of color avoids confusion between parties embroiled in a conflict, making an organization or envo…
Seeing like a surveillance agency? Sensor realism as aesthetic critique of visual data governance
Despite the centrality of visual data creation and analysis in security-related governance not only of heavily surveilled battlefields, but of fields as diverse as petty crime, urban mobility and migration, the sensors and systems producing visual data used for security purposes are rarely themselves the focus of close scrutiny. This is surprising as photography, IR, and science and technology studies literature all point towards equipment as bei…
The security captor, captured. Digital cameras, visual politics and material semiotics
Digital cameras are everywhere and play important roles in security and political scenes, yet they remain overlooked in security and IR research where debates on technology and visuality remain separated, often giving the mistaken impression that the digital images that populate scholarship are primarily visual. In this paper, I understand the digital camera as an inscription device that produces digital images, for which the digital qualities ar…
Toward a Critique of Algorithmic Violence
Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing t…
Visual Appropriation
This article introduces visual appropriation as a method in critical international political thinking and acting, contributing to the evolving repertoire of multiple, pluralist methods for visual analysis of international relations operating in a digital visual environment. We define appropriation as reuse of existing visual material-either in its entirety or in part-without substantially altering the immanent characteristics of the appropriated …
Smartphones and video as security articulation infrastructures
Smartphone videos can co-constitute security reality. As smartphones spread in the 2010s, videos of deadly police violence against Black United States citizens became common, and over time these videos co-constituted anti-Black police violence as a security issue, which found its expression as Black Lives Matter (BLM). This article questions the role that smartphones and video play for BLM, and argues that security theory needs a better grasp of …
Photographic Critique Today
Sociology (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Global Security and Public Health (7 works) · Art (6 works)