Update 'content/session/alinejad.md'

content/session/alinejad.md

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-title = "The Quest for Representation"
+title = "alinejad"
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 # The Quest for Representation
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 ## Migrants as Documenters 
 
-Reading the statement that the filmmaker wrote to accompany his film in this publication, I was struck by the importance Jafari placed on documenting “facts of migration”. As a director, he is clearly interested in addressing an audience who might be considering making the trip, which is evident in his repeated question to the subjects of the film about whether their perilous journey was ‘worth it’. This adds an interesting layer to the film, speaking both for and to those who may or may not migrate, rather than strictly being a representation of Europe’s ‘other’ to itself. This is an interesting position, and is a mode of occupying the role of migrant documentary filmmaker that documentary cinema about boat migration to Europe has largely left unexplored.[alinejad_3] 
+Reading the statement that the filmmaker wrote to accompany his film in this publication, I was struck by the importance Jafari placed on documenting “facts of migration”. As a director, he is clearly interested in addressing an audience who might be considering making the trip, which is evident in his repeated question to the subjects of the film about whether their perilous journey was ‘worth it’. This adds an interesting layer to the film, speaking both for and to those who may or may not migrate, rather than strictly being a representation of Europe’s ‘other’ to itself. This is an interesting position, and is a mode of occupying the role of migrant documentary filmmaker that documentary cinema about boat migration to Europe has largely left unexplored.[^alinejad_2] 
 
 But this film is clearly not only intended to reach potential migrants considering the trip. It is also clearly meant for a Greek and broader European viewership. And this is why it is interesting to note that Jafari’s statement places emphasis on the relationship between the migrant and digital technologies. In fact, he goes as far as suggesting that such technologies’ ability to reveal more of reality of the situation consequently could result in fewer deaths in the Mediterranean. This is a remarkable vision, given that the film does not feature any of the characters using digital technologies for accessing news, documenting their experiences, or communicating with one another. The absence of scenes of digital technology use from the film reflects an interesting ambiguity between on the one hand the promise of digital media to allow refugees to represent themselves through their own media production, and on the other hand the relative public absence of such self-representations. 
 
-When I conducted ethnographic research on Iranian migrants’ use of digital media for self-representation and expression in a very different context (Los Angeles), I found that many of my respondents wanted to use media to counter negative representations of Iranians, Middle Easterners, and immigrants in the US. But not all of them could gain access to the larger audiences that those negative representations reached. There were very few cases of more widely influential media productions. And these relied on modes of transcending ‘migrant media’ production and accessing institutions and knowledge that reflected their proficiencies in the social and political environments of their ‘host’ country, the US.[alinejad_3] This film is similarly a product of the passage of time since the migrant journey, a proficiency with the medium of film, and a collaboration with Greek, non-migrant partners embedded within the political context in Europe. 
+When I conducted ethnographic research on Iranian migrants’ use of digital media for self-representation and expression in a very different context (Los Angeles), I found that many of my respondents wanted to use media to counter negative representations of Iranians, Middle Easterners, and immigrants in the US. But not all of them could gain access to the larger audiences that those negative representations reached. There were very few cases of more widely influential media productions. And these relied on modes of transcending ‘migrant media’ production and accessing institutions and knowledge that reflected their proficiencies in the social and political environments of their ‘host’ country, the US.[^alinejad_3] This film is similarly a product of the passage of time since the migrant journey, a proficiency with the medium of film, and a collaboration with Greek, non-migrant partners embedded within the political context in Europe. 
 
 Simply put, not everyone with access to a digital video device and an internet connection has access to the same audiences. And thinking so fails to acknowledge the complex ways in which online content circulates and produces audiences in the process, often in very different ways that other media forms do. The notion of “networked publics” is just one of the influential ideas scholars have come up with to theorise how emerging technologies shape how messages (are) spread. And despite the many new potentialities this implies, there are also limits to the scope and pace of changes to how institutions value different media forms. In the case of this film, it suffices to ask the question of whether I would have been asked to write about this film for this publication had it been a YouTube clip. 
 
@@ -36,8 +36,8 @@ Finally, I wonder whether more reflexive and less realist styles of documentary
 
 ## References
 
-[alinejad_1] Cp. Dimitris Dalakoglou, “Europe’s last frontier: The spatialities of the refugee crisis”, *City*, 20 (2), 2016, pp. 180–185. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13604813.2016.1170467 [accessed June 11, 2017].
+[^alinejad_1] Cp. Dimitris Dalakoglou, “Europe’s last frontier: The spatialities of the refugee crisis”, *City*, 20 (2), 2016, pp. 180–185. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13604813.2016.1170467 [accessed June 11, 2017].
 
-[alinejad_2] Cp. Sandra Ponzanesi, “On the Waterfront”, *Interventions*, 18(2), 2016, pp. 217–233. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1079501 [accessed June 11, 2017].
+[^alinejad_2] Cp. Sandra Ponzanesi, “On the Waterfront”, *Interventions*, 18(2), 2016, pp. 217–233. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369801X.2015.1079501 [accessed June 11, 2017].
 
-[alinejad_3] Cp. Donya Alinejad, *The Internet Formations of Iranian American-ness. Next Generation Diaspora*, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
+[^alinejad_3] Cp. Donya Alinejad, *The Internet Formations of Iranian American-ness. Next Generation Diaspora*, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.