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Papers by Nina Grønlykke Mollerup

National Dialogue Handbook: Case Studies, Feb 1, 2017

On July 25, 2013 the drafting of a new constitution by the Tunisian Constitutional Assembly reach... more On July 25, 2013 the drafting of a new constitution by the Tunisian Constitutional Assembly reached a complete impasse, following the assassination of opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi that very day. Fears mounted that the fragile democratization process would come to a halt. In 2011, free and fair elections had brought the Islamist democratic party Ennahda to power, which had formed a government with two smaller opposition parties. Simultaneously, other " old " opposition forces underwent internal reforms and strengthened their position in the new political landscape. Instead of building strong coalitions, these " old " forces reactivated old struggles and disputes. Only in July 2013, during the critical moment, did the political forces realize that they needed to enter into negotiations and dialogue with each other to save the country. The so-called Quartet was formed, which managed to convince most parties represented in the National Constitutional Assembly to accept their road map and enter into negotiations focusing on three main issues: governmental, constitutional and electoral. The National Dialogue did not unfold as a well-planned process with a thought-through design, but rather was a response to an acute political crisis. Hence, the Tunisian National Dialogue served as an instrument for crisis management, implemented while the crisis was still unfolding. The Tunisian National Dialogue was an ad hoc process, with many actors engaged on different levels and several parts of the process taking place at the same time.

Theorising Media and Conflict

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Journalism Practice, 2016

In this article, I discuss how information activists and journalists in Egypt claimed to acquire ... more In this article, I discuss how information activists and journalists in Egypt claimed to acquire knowledge about the world, looking particularly at the period of 2012 and 2013, during which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and Mohammed Morsi in turn were leading the country. Taking a point of departure in anthropological fieldwork with information activists and journalists in Egypt, I show that information activists and journalists often had very similar practices and goals, which at times made the boundaries very blurry. Yet I argue that there was a significant distinction between the epistemologies of information activists and journalists. Information activists claimed to acquire knowledge about events from being part of them, whereas journalists claimed to acquire knowledge about events from observing them without taking part. Relatedly, information activists and journalists had significantly different relationships with their audiences.

Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies

This chapter presents a rethinking of the relationship between ethnography and so-called big soci... more This chapter presents a rethinking of the relationship between ethnography and so-called big social data as being comparable to those between a sum and its parts (Strathern 1991/2004). Taking cue from Tim Ingold’s one world anthropology (2018) the chapter argues that relations between ethnography and social media data can be established as contrapuntal. That is, the types of material are understood as different, yet fundamentally interconnected. The chapter explores and qualifies this affinity with the aim of identifying potentials and further questions for digital migration research. The chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out with Syrian refugees and solidarians in the Danish–Swedish borderlands in 2018–2019 as well as data collected for 2011–2018 from 200 public Facebook pages run by solidarity organisations, NGOs, and informal refugee welcome and solidarity groups.

Intercultural Communication, Identity, and Social Movements in the Digital Age , 2019

A 19-year-old boy was subjected to military trial and was beaten absolutely horribly [in prison].... more A 19-year-old boy was subjected to military trial and was beaten absolutely horribly [in prison]. Beaten horribly. We managed to get the mother on TV and discuss everything and to say everything that happened to her son, including the violence inside the prison. As soon as she came off the air someone from the Ministry of Interior called her and said, "I'm at your command." Activist from No to Military Trials for Civilians 1 On February 11, 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) deposed Egyptian president for 30 years, Hosni Mubarak, after 18 days of mass protests and strikes across Egypt. SCAF took over presidential powers of the country in what it, pressured by the masses in the street, professed as a transitional phase to elections. Army tanks first moved into the epicentre of the protests, Tahrir Square, on January 28, 2011. They were welcomed as heroes. People clapped, shook hands with and kissed the soldiers, climbed triumphantly on the tanks and armed personnel carriers (APCs) and chanted, "al gīsh wa al shaʿb yid waḥda" ("the army and the people are one hand"). 2 Though some were confused about the role of the army, particularly as it stood by and watched as protesters in Tahrir Square were attacked on several occasions (Batty & Olorenshaw, 2011; Weaver, Siddique, Owen, & Adams, 2011), the army generally maintained a reputation as the saviours of the revolution at this time. On the night of February 25, 2011, two weeks after Mubarak

Theorising Media and Conflict, 2020

In this article, I explore the notion of presence, especially as it pertains to anthropological n... more In this article, I explore the notion of presence, especially as it pertains to anthropological notions of ‘being there’ and argue that studying with media significantly influences our physical presence as we are able to bring distant and not so distant places into our fields. Anthropology was founded on the notion of ‘being there’ and it is still a crucial claim to knowledge for anthropologists. Digital anthropology has brought new challenges to the concept of ‘being there’, giving increasing depth to the arguments that physical presence is not a prerequisite for ethnographic studies or even for ‘being there’. In order to discuss how media might influence our presence in the field, I develop the notion of thick presence. I take a point of departure in my anthropological fieldwork with information activists and journalists in Egypt in 2012 and 2013 at the height of the revolutionary uprising from.

Global Media and Communication, 2021

This article studies the virality and assigned iconicity of visual icons by examining the roles a... more This article studies the virality and assigned iconicity of visual icons by examining the roles and interplays between photographers and other media actors contributing to early phases of making and sharing the Omran Daqneesh images from Aleppo, 2016. We draw on theoretical frameworks concerning the mobilization of iconic imagery in today’s digitalized and globalized media landscape as well the interpretive continuum of documentary evidence and emotional appeal typically applied to iconic imagery of children. Empirically, we take our point of departure in interviews with photographers, NGO workers, editors and journalists involved in facilitating, producing and initially disseminating the Omran Daqneesh imagery, to explore how – in contrast to the seemingly straightforward communication offered by visual icons – they are in effect the result of an intricate interplay between these actors, which in different ways and for different reasons contribute to spreading the images and determ...

Social Analysis, 2020

This article explores navigation when knowing is intrinsically difficult. It looks at how irregul... more This article explores navigation when knowing is intrinsically difficult. It looks at how irregularized migrants know during their perilous trips to and through Europe, focusing particularly on the significance of digital practices on these journeys. Based on retrospective ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Syrian refugees in and around the Danish-Swedish borderland, the article seeks to engage with digital migration studies, arguing that an understanding of irregularized migrants’ navigation, whether with or without digital practices, must involve the emplacement and embodiment of knowledge. Second, the article brings experiences of instability and danger into the anthropological theorization of knowing in order to explore the shifting positions and capabilities of knowing bodies.

International Journal of Communication, 2015

This article focuses on two related street screening initiatives, Tahrir Cinema and Kazeboon, whi... more This article focuses on two related street screening initiatives, Tahrir Cinema and Kazeboon, which took place in Egypt mainly between 2011 and 2013. Based on long-term ethnographic studies and activist work, we explore street screenings as place-making and describe how participants at street screenings knew with rather than from the screenings. With the point of departure that participants’ experiences of the images cannot be understood detached from their experiences of everything around the images, we argue that Egyptian revolutionary street screenings enabled particular paths to knowledge because they made media engage with and take place within everyday spaces that the revolution aims to liberate and transform, and because the screenings’ public and illegal manner at times embodied events portrayed in the images.

International Journal of Cultural Studies

This article traces the intersecting and interstitial spaces of political aesthetics in political... more This article traces the intersecting and interstitial spaces of political aesthetics in political street art featuring key activists of the Egyptian uprising of 2011–13 as well as the following struggle. We argue that the complex political expressions displayed in the images as recontextualized and embodied afford the images different roles in citizens’ political and social struggles. We develop three modalities of political street art – emplacement, travelling and conversation – that allow different works different roles in the political formation of subjectivity. In order to understand street art’s role in political subjectivity formation, this article applies visual discursive analyses to two expressions of political street art: first, the stencil of a blue bra, referring to sitt al-banat, a woman who was stripped naked in public as she was beaten unconscious by Egyptian military soldiers; second, the mural of then jailed activist Sanaa Seif in the Copenhagen borough of Christiania.

National Dialogue Handbook: Case Studies, Feb 1, 2017

Theorising Media and Conflict

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Journalism Practice, 2016

Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies

Intercultural Communication, Identity, and Social Movements in the Digital Age , 2019

Theorising Media and Conflict, 2020

Global Media and Communication, 2021

Social Analysis, 2020

International Journal of Communication, 2015

International Journal of Cultural Studies

This dissertation is about information activists and journalists in revolutionary Egypt and their... more This dissertation is about information activists and journalists in revolutionary Egypt and their effort to make and spread dissenting stories and create revolutionary places, risking their life, freedom and wellbeing to do so. I approach media as place-making. I focus on media as part of the phenomenological world and I am interested in how media influence and are influenced by the places they move through. Thus, I pay attention to how media occur out in the world among people and I place media in relation to the movement of people and other things. This approach to media entails a focus on how information activists, journalists and others in revolutionary Egypt engage with media with their bodies. And it allows a focus on small places, which I find more revealing than the grand narratives of Tahrir Square. Thus, in this dissertation, I investigate the emplacement of information activists, journalists, and their media. Doing so, I seek to show how information activists and journalists move with and are moved by media in tents, streets, offices, apartments, and more. Further, I seek to show how media in revolutionary Egypt create opportunities for action and knowing, when information activists and journalists engage with media in different places.
The dissertation consists of four articles, which are brought together by an extended introduction. The extended introduction situates the efforts of information activists and journalists in revolutionary Egypt by tracing the developments of military dictatorship back to the first military coup in 1952. Further, the introduction presents an analytical framework by developing the notion of media as place-making. Lastly, the introduction establishes a methodological framework, which draws on the notion of media as place-making. The methodological framework is grounded in phenomenological anthropology and establishes knowing in places while paying particular attention to how media influence place.
Article 1, Blurred boundaries or conflicting epistemologies: Information activism and journalism in Egypt argues that information activists and journalists often have similar practices and goals. Yet, the article traces a significant distinction in their epistemologies. I describe these different epistemologies with Tim Ingold’s (2000a) notions of a global and spherical perception of the environment, which place the perceiver respectively outside and inside the world, which is perceived. Article 2, ‘Being there’, phone in hand: Thick presence and anthropological fieldwork with media investigates my own emplacement as an anthropologist and argues that studying with media influences our presence in the field. This argument also has implications for the activists and journalists of my study and their presence in different places. Article 3, Tents, tweets and television: Breaking taboos about military trials for civilians in revolutionary Egypt uses the concept of communicative ecologies to describe how infrastructure developed through different places in relation to the No to Military Trials for Civilians campaign. Lastly, article 4, Making media public: On revolutionary street screenings in Egypt, which I have co-written with Mosireen activist, Sherief Gaber, exemplifies the importance of looking at media as place-making by describing how videos shown at revolutionary street screenings influenced and were influenced by the places they moved through.
The dissertation is based on seven months of anthropological fieldwork with information activists and journalists in Egypt, extensive previous and subsequent stays in Egypt and an extended period of fieldwork outside of Egypt. The fieldworks in Egypt were carried out in two rounds, first in the beginning of 2012, when The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was leading the country, and again in the beginning of 2013, when Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was president.
This dissertation contributes to the emerging body of empirically-based scholarship on media and the Egyptian revolution, particularly by investigating connections between activists and journalists, by following significant stages in the revolution, and by engaging with small places. The main methodological contribution of this dissertation revolves around studying with media. I develop the notion of thick presence, breaking presence into co-location, ‘the presence of there here’, and ‘our presence there’. This provides a way of conceptualising that presence with media is not always reciprocal. The main theoretical contribution of this dissertation revolves around media as place-making. Violence has highlighted important things about how I could understand media and place in revolutionary Egypt. I argue that media make places by bringing a presence of other places into a place. With this, I contribute to how we can understand increasingly moveable media as part of and as made by the places they move through. Lastly, this dissertation has grown of out an industrial PhD carried out in collaboration with NGO, International Media Support (IMS). It is therefore relevant to point to its applied contribution. My research contributes to the work of IMS and similar institutions mainly by showing the relations between media and place. By doing so, it highlights the importance of supporting the creation of places with media. That is, this dissertation points to the importance of looking beyond products and audiences and engage with the places in which media occur. Thus, supporting the creation of a documentary film would be well accompanied by an attention to how this film can be shown.