New media testimony can counter mainstream news abandonment of slow-violence coverage

Evidence

In volume and velocity, the new media have made available testimony on a previously unimaginable scale, testimony that can fortify the environmentalism of the poor and push back against the perpetrators of slow violence. When, for instance, the New York Times, along with American network and cable TV had largely baled on covering the Gulf oil disaster with any sustained, critical investigative edge, myriad new media sites kept skeptics and activists apprised. So, too, the underwater cabinet meeting staged in the Maldives was more than an isolated act of desperation by an imperiled micro-nation: the meeting achieved its global visibility not just randomly through YouTube but through the coordinated efforts of 350.com, a vast, creative transnational coalition to reduce carbon emissions, a coalition that links activists—in the ether and on the ground—across scores of countries. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 846

Categorization

• XREF: Nixon’s Gulf disaster analysis here extends his earlier ch59-60 chapter claims that mainstream media capped the perceived duration of the spill’s aftermath; this shows new media as the counterforce. — connects to: Counter-claims lacking emotive evidence are drowned out by visual spectacle in media
• SEED: Angle: how performative action (underwater cabinet) travels through coordinated digital coalitions to make an ‘unnewsworthy’ slow event globally legible.

Broader Connections

• Counter-claims lacking emotive evidence are drowned out by visual spectacle in media #corroborates (0.75)