Fotografias que viralizam: quando uma imagem mobiliza afetos coletivos

Abstract

This dissertation has the objective to trace paths of understanding about the viralization process of a photograph in the contemporary digital environment. Therefore, we will start from the assumption that such a phenomenon may indicate a mass mobilization of affections, jointly triggering images that inhabit our personal and collective memories. To bring this dynamic to light, we propose in the first part of this work na approximation between the thought of the German art historian Aby Warburg (1866 - 1929) - whose theory deals with the survival of pathetic formulas (Pathosformel) in our hereditary visual heritage - and the communication field, with the objective of identifying points of dialogue between our problematic about viral photographs and what was called Warburguian Science Without a Name, through a bibliographic review of this theory. In the second part of our research, we will seek to think about the contemporary statutes of the image from important thinkers of this area, such as the authors Georges Didi-Huberman and Juan Fontcuberta, and, still, considering the new mediatic bios thought by Muniz Sodré as the “ place ”where the phenomenon we seek to understand better is inserted. In our third and final part, we will highlight and analyze, in the light of the Warburguian Science Without a Name, a group of three photographs that have gone viral in Brazil in the last five years, with the aim of verifying the possible existence of a surviving Pathosformel in some of these photographs. Finally, we will use his method of associating images to create our own thematic boards, just like Atlas Mnemosyne (work made from boards, containing around a thousand images and produced mainly between 1927 until his death in 1929), exposing thus, the constellation of changeable images capable of mobilizing our affections in the process that turns some photographs on the web into viral photographs. Our qualitative and exploratory case study will seek, on the one hand, to understand the phenomenon of the viralization of such photographs, and, on the other, to bring contemporary digital photography to the center of an intersection of interdisciplinar theoretical axes, characteristic of thought Warburguian, and who proved to be fruitful in the search for outlining new means of understanding for a phenomenon typical of a hyperconnected society.