Intensive Media Aversive Affect and Visual Culture [Hardcover]

There is something unsettling, but also powerful, in the encounter with individual and collective experiences of human suffering. Intensive Media explores the discomfort and fascination initiated by instances of pain and suffering, their 'aversive affects', as they trouble but also vitalise contemporary media environments.Contents Acknowledgements 1. Pain: Aversive Affects and Micropolitics 2. War: Visual Brutality and Affective Vectors 3. Torture: Obscenity and Complicity, from East Timor to Abu Ghraib 4. Disaster: Intensive Encounters with Scenes of Suffering 5. Masochism: Painful Pleasures 6. Salvation: Medieval Techniques, New Affective Communities 7. Illness: Putting it All Online Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

'McCosker's book is a very interesting read with its focus on pain images as forms of mediation aimed at appealing to a shared human vulnerability, on the affective and political complexity of pain images, and on the development of concepts to describe

more-than-representational forms of communication.' - Carsten Stage, Journal of Media and Communication Research

Anthony McCosker lectures in Media and Communications in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University, Australia. His research explores media affect, digital and visual cultures and social media practices and publics.