Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication Releases CARGC Paper 9

Samira Rajabi examines the 2017 travel ban as a traumatic experience and its digital mediation.

By Marina Krikorian, CARGC

Three women seated while holding signs. The two to the left are smiling at each other, and the left-most one's white sign says " Im not with stupid", with 'not' in red, capitalised letters and has a red arrow pointed to a cut-out of Donald Trump's face. The one in the middle has a cardboard sign which reads "This is my Iranian Resistant Bitch Face". Finally, the lady to the right, who is typing on her phone, is holding a sign that reads "Solidarity not Racism! Socialism not Trumpism" on a rainbow background

The Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication is proud to present CARGC Paper 9, “Mediating Possibility after Suffering: Meaning Making of the Micro-political through Digital Media,” by CARGC Postdoctoral Fellow, Samira Rajabi.

Using three empirical case studies from Instagram, Rajabi examines the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban as a traumatic experience and its digital mediation. She first explores a general understanding of trauma as it relates to global media studies and then develops the notion of “symbolic trauma” to understand how Iranian-Americans mediated the travel ban’s effects.

CARGC Director Marwan M. Kraidy notes in his introduction, “by tackling affect and trauma in the context of the Iranian diaspora and the United States administration of President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Muslim Ban,’ Dr. Rajabi beautifully blends the study of individual suffering and expression with nationalism, immigration, and geopolitics.”

Samira Rajabi completed her Ph.D. in Media Research and Practice at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where her research focused on digital media's affordances in meaning making processes, particularly related to trauma. Rajabi also has a degree in Business Management and Entrepreneurship, a minor in French from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Masters in International and Intercultural Communication from the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Rajabi is a scholar of development, international relations, feminist theory, and communication. Her research interests include international communication, trans-national boundaries, and the way culture, particularly popular culture in digital media, have consequences for social systems and movements. Samira's work attempts to bridge public scholarship, academia, and social justice advocacy with leadership in her community.

Download CARGC Paper 9 here.

Read previous CARGC Papers at ScholarlyCommons.

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