This is Not a Picture: Satellite Imagery and Technovisual Authority

• In Event: 338 - Section on Communication and Information Technologies Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Paper Session: Table 09.

Abstract

Satellite images are generally seen to show true evidence of events on the ground, as understood by the public and as framed by popular discourse. However, this is a constructed truth status through the framing of images as technological artifacts similar to camera photographs. Analysis of court testimony by satellite imaging experts in the International Criminal Court exposes how images are understood by scientists, through various levels of uncertainty, as well as exposing a deeper explanation of how they are constructed as technical data outputs. This paper argues that despite the expert understanding, satellite images still retain a ‘technovisual authority’ in how they are circulated and consumed, displaying the disconnect between the technical and the epistemological and the power that is attributed to how ‘truth’ is constructed.

Author

• Monica M. Brannon, New School for Social Research