In this episode, Laura speaks with Dr. Miguel Varela Rodriguez, an academic at the University of Valladolid in Spain, and peace mediation expert. Listen if you're interested in:
- How cancer and conflict are portrayed on social media
- Use of images in peace mediation
- The role of technology and AI in peace mediation
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguel-varela/
- Website: https://www.miguelvarela.me/
About Laura:
Laura is a former Executive Director of the International Mediation Institute and a negotiation and mediation lecturer. Her doctoral research asked “in what ways does blame make villains in politics” and covered the gamut from literature studies and linguistics to psychology and neuroscience, victimology to political science. Her expertise includes emotions, polarization, blame, and international politics. Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or ResearchGate—or even both!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Laura May (00:11):
hello and welcome to the conflict tipping podcast,
from mediate.com, the podcastthat explores social conflict
and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, andtoday I have with me newly
minted Doctor Miguel Rodriguez.
Adjunct professor at the Departmentof Sociology and social work at the
University of Via Dalid in Spain,associate with conciliation resources
(00:34):
and former advisor at Mediater.
His work lies at the intersectionof peace work and visual media, and
he's just told me he doesn't likespeaking, so I'm very excited to
have him here on a podcast with me.
So welcome, Miguel.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (00:47):
Hi Lara.
It's a pleasure to be here and wonderfulpronunciation of all those Spanish words,
Laura May (00:53):
Yes.
Yes, you do.
. Exciting.
All right.
Look, I'm really happyand happy to hear as well.
I won't be speaking Spanish inthe podcast because I feel like
that's a whole other series.
But I wanna jump straight in and askyou about this doctoral research you've
just finished, because I understand itwas to do with imagery and social media.
(01:13):
So what was it actually about?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (01:15):
Yeah, no, that's the basis of it.
It's primarily about imagesof cancer on Instagram, right.
But it's really a projectdedicated to seeing how we can
investigate images in social media.
And the reason that I did that was thatI felt a lot of the work that we do on
social media is about text and how wewrite and how we communicate through text.
(01:38):
And I wanted to see, well, isthere something else that we do?
Because I think that a lot of thecontent we consume in social media
apart from video, are images.
Those are the things that stick with us.
And so I found that the topic ofcancer was a very good topic to explore
this, because number one, it's gota very, very clear visual identity.
(01:59):
We all sort of have images of what thecancer patient looks like, especially when
we think of patients of breast cancer.
And number two, because I just felt apersonal impulse to work on that topic.
So what I did was I looked into Instagram,see what images are there that mention
words related to cancer, see how I couldaccess them and how I could study them.
(02:25):
And then based on that, try toidentify a series of what we call
visual disc discourses, common imagesor images that we commonly produce
to talk about a specific topic.
In this case, cancer.
Laura May (02:38):
Interesting.
And so you must have had to filter out alot of star sign related content, right?
If you are going.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (02:46):
Yeah, yeah, no, that was one of the problems.
And it's a typical problem whenyou're dealing with social media is,
is what is and what is not relevant.
this particular case, when it came tothings related the the cancer sign, it
was quite easy because there were lots ofmemes lots of very visually identifiable
(03:06):
images that did not relate to cancer.
But I also found another kind of imagethat was, let's say, jokes about cancer.
Not about people who have cancer,but about the prospects of having
cancer and those having to domainly with tobacco and smoking.
So yes, you do have todo a lot of filtering.
(03:26):
Unfortu.
Laura May (03:28):
And this is actually making me really curious cuz you've just
described the visual discourse of cancerpatients and what that can look like.
I mean, is this whole tobaccocancer discourse another way
of portraying cancer visually?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (03:41):
Well, yeah.
See there are many different discoursesof cancer and I would, typically
categorize them between dis discoursesused by organizations, dis discourses,
used by patients dis discourses,used by, let's say, the public.
So those who are not working oncancer and those who do not suffer
from cancer, whether it's on theirbodies or in their social circles.
(04:04):
And then we also have disdiscourses depending on the types of
emotions that we want to generate.
Positive or negative, and even on whatwe want to achieve with those discourses.
So if it's just to express ourselves,if it's to show support or if it's
to pre mitigate certain behaviorsthat we know are related to cancer.
(04:26):
And so when it comes to those lastones, I do see lots of images that
are meant to create fear, so to speak,images of people who smoke and then
have cancer, that type of thing.
But yeah, they, they're very different.
All of those discourses and they're quitecomplicated to separate from each other.
Laura May (04:46):
Hmm.
And so let's go back then to the visualidentity of cancer patients, right?
Because you just said that theywere really distinct in how
they're portrayed, and you saidparticularly breast cancer patients.
So what are the things weassociate with with breast cancer?
Images?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (05:02):
Well, when you look back at the literature and what's
been done since the seventies, there'sbeen quite a bit of pushback against a
certain image of a breast cancer patientwho is a, a very feminine, very happy
typically beautiful woman with makeup.
Right?
And so since the seventies, I would saythere's been a lot of production in terms
(05:24):
of academic research, but also activistwork to try and portray different images
of the breast cancer patient fromwomen who have suffered from mastectomy
to women who just do not identifywith that whole discourse of let me be
feminine and let me fight this cancer.
Right?
And so those dis discourses are moreinclusive, but what I see is, They
(05:48):
stay within a small realm, which is therealm of activism, the realm of actual
patients who then make their voice heard.
But when you look at commercial campaigns,those campaigns that are meant to support
research or to support patients ingeneral, they still deploy that image.
And, and this has been ongoing since at,at the very minimum, since the 1970s.
(06:12):
And it doesn't seem like it's stop it,except when you look at the communications
of cancer related organizations.
So here in Spain, we have a Spanishsociety Against Cancer who are now trying
to generate a whole different image,being very conscious of this, right?
That we, we have to portraycancer in knowledge.
(06:32):
All of its experience,not just one experience.
That also aligns with these coursesthat are fairly standardized.
Laura May (06:40):
And I find it really curious that you just mentioned that even within
the activist portrayals of breast cancerand images of breast cancer patients, it's
still about reclaiming femininity or beingfeminine, and then of course excludes
images of men with breast cancer, right?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (06:59):
Well, yeah, I wouldn't say it's about reclaiming
femininity or, or it's, it's aboutdiscussing what that means, right?
So yes, it is about reclaimingit, but it's about portraying
women as Diverse as women are.
Right?
And so if you look at the work ofJoey Spence, for example, who was
a photographer who suffered frombreast cancer, she typically showed
(07:22):
herself or she pictured herself witha lot of inscriptions written by
hand on her chest, questioning theownership of her breasts and saying,
well, is this a medical product?
Is this a product of of society?
Is this a commercial?
Is this me?
And when you look, for example, alsoat the work of Maka who suffered
from a breast cancer and wasmastectomies, she was the first woman
(07:46):
ever in the US to be presented as amastectomies woman in a magazine cover.
And this was in the nineties, in theearly nineties, and it generated lot.
Steam because people were quiteangry that the New York Times
would be showing such an image.
So it is about having that discussionand let's say taken back that identity,
(08:09):
right from the commercial image that waspurely, it was based on pink, it was
based makeup, it was based on the smile,and there was no room for anything else.
Laura May (08:20):
it's like, oh, I'm so happy I had something that might kill me.
like, what a great outcome.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (08:24):
Yeah.
But, but look, there's also, and I'vestruggled with this as I was writing and,
and doing my research because that'sknown as the decos of survivorship, right?
The idea that if you face it with optimismand with hope, you have a better prospect.
And it does help a lot of people becauseit provides you with hope for the future.
(08:44):
And it helps you get up in themorning and say, let me continue.
Let me have my breakfast.
Let me stand up, let me go out.
Even though yesterdayI had a very bad day.
And so it's positive for lotsof people, but not for everyone.
And so by standardizing that image incommercial campaigns and in the media,
(09:05):
we're leaving other people out andwe're telling them, no, your experience
is not valid because it doesn'tconform with what we're showing here.
Right.
And so there's been quite a bit ofwork done with women in particular
because lots of the work that isdone on let's say the social aspects
of cancer is done on breast cancer.
And so lots of women say, well, I, Idon't feel like I'm free to be exhausted.
(09:29):
Like, I feel right.
I don't feel like I'mfree to complain now.
I don't feel like I'm freeto feel as bad as I do.
Because I have this pressure on me,not only from commercial campaigns,
not only from the media, but from myloved ones who have consumed and been
exposed to that discourse their wholelives, and so they now expect of me
(09:51):
to deploy that discourse as well.
So I thought it was aninteresting area to be looking at
Laura May (09:57):
Absolutely.
And for me it's really interestingbecause, I mean, I'm slightly out of
the right age group just yet to knowa lot of people with breast cancer.
So the only people I know thathave had a mastectomy were one
person who did have breast cancer,and she said, Nope, lop 'em off.
And that was her phrasing.
I'm like, all right, cool.
Go for it.
And then, of course, trans men as well.
(10:18):
And so this is really my onlycontext in which I've seen
that at this point in my life.
And so for me, thismakes it really curious.
You know, as I get older and as moreof my friends probably will presumably
have breast cancer whether we'll seea shift in those discourses about
how you can be to have breast cancer.
And again, I wanna include men inthat as well, cuz as you've just
highlighted yourself these images arestill about women, which is really
(10:42):
fascinating . Forgive me for alwayshaving my intersectional feminist lens on.
I'm like, all right, so,
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (10:46):
No, that's superb and we haven't talked about that.
And sometimes when I speak aboutfeminism, I feel like an intruder.
But it is a profoundly feminist thesis.
At the end of day, it's all aboutquestioning, standardized images of
women and what being a woman means.
And it's not out of,out of women that I do.
So it's because breast cancer isthe most represented type of cancer.
(11:08):
When I went on social media, I foundabout 40 million images in total
that contained the keyword cancer.
And by and extrapolation, I foundthat breast cancer was more than
10 times more often visualized thanall other types of cancer combined.
Laura May (11:24):
By the way, for me, feminism includes men.
It's about everyone who'staking down the patriarchy.
So yeah, I'm not anexclusionary feminist.
Anyway, so that's a whole other thing.
Anyway.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (11:34):
What I also find interesting about this
is that obviously breast cancer is.
One of the most visible, mostprevalent types of cancer, but
it's not the only type of cancer.
But what seems to have happened is thatthe discourse of survivorship, which
wa became, let's say activated withbreast cancer has, I call it, it has
(11:55):
infiltrated all other types of cancer.
So all representations ofany other type of cancer.
And when we activate that conceptin our mind, right, we immediately
associate it with breast cancer becausethere's been a commercial use of that.
Group of illnesses to sort ofportray women in a particular way.
(12:16):
And so it's not surprising thatlots of the literature around this
is written by feminist authors whoquestion this idea and who also wonder,
well, is there nothing else that wecan talk about when it comes to cancer?
What about people who suffer frompancreatic cancer or from lung cancer
or from prostate cancer, right?
Because when you look at the discourseof types of cancer that affect men,
(12:40):
primarily as would be the case withbreast cancer for women what I'm seeing
is that increasingly we're moving inthe same direction in the direction
of creating gendered discourses.
And so what I found, and I'm stillto do more research on this, is that.
When we produce images of prostate cancer,we now produce images of men holding,
(13:03):
literally holding hammers and ready to,you know, be strong and a mustache and
with their muscles or out in nature.
And so we're going in thesame direction, right?
It's and it's, well, there areplenty of reasons for that, but
I, the first one is that I thinkwhen it comes to visual discourses,
it's so easy and so comfortable toactivate standardized discourses.
(13:26):
And so, well, look, we're talkingabout men here, so let's use what's
typically thought to be a man, right?
Someone who's strong and, andwith a beard and all of that.
And and it's what we've been doingwith breast cancer and it's brought
us to a point where we now question it.
So why do it for other types of cancer?
Laura May (13:44):
You know, as you were describing this image of the, these
are men that have prostate cancer.
All I could think aboutwas dating profiles.
I think the only things you missedwere like holding a giant fish.
Right.
That's apparently thepinnacle of masculinities.
You
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (13:59):
it's um, but one of the things that I've struggled with
in this project is obviously the, theknowledge that I'm a bit of an intruder
because even though I'm doing research oncancer generally, because lots of the work
is Don and Bryce Cancer, it's somethingthat I probably won't suffer in my life.
It does affect men, butit's at a minimal rate.
(14:19):
I haven't had any personalexperiences of cancer.
And so I do feel very much like anintruder there, but I've been trying
to move into a realm that is a bitcloser to me, which is the prospect
of prostate cancer and also the wholeNovember movement, which at its origin was
closely linked to prostate cancer, butnow I find has diluted that message into
(14:43):
health issues that affect men in general.
And so I think it's precisely bydoing that, that we have translated
it into a fairly normativediscourse of what being a man is.
And so I do struggle a bit with, withthis is the, it's the, the whole point
of studying social issues, right?
It's they affect you and, and howyou perceive , how you perceive them.
(15:07):
And so it's quite difficultto stay neutral in that
sense, or impartial, at least
Laura May (15:12):
Absolutely.
Okay.
So now that you've come up withthis method though, right, as far as
analyzing visual discourse via socialmedia, what other kinds of things
could we actually apply that to?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (15:24):
Well, look, I've come up with a method.
The problem is that method tomorrowprobably won't work and it's . That's
a reality of, of social media research,that constantly, all of these things that
we know as APIs are basically the backdoor to enter a social media platform.
They're constantly closed.
They're constantly locked.
(15:46):
But if we can maintain some ofit, at least the principle of
how we approach it is sequencing.
We could apply it to pretty muchanything that has to do with
how we imagine social issues.
is how we translate into photographsor into drawings, or even into memes.
Things that are deeply, deeply personal,and that affects society as a whole.
(16:10):
And so one of the things thatI think we can apply it to is
how do we understand conflict?
What do we visuallyassociate with conflict?
And there's been quite a bit ofwork in the past done on trying to
use photography or actually usingphotography in in mediation contexts or
in dialogue context through photo voice.
And all of these methods thatare, I think, are fascinating.
Laura May (16:34):
Mm-hmm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (16:34):
And typically it's about photographing
their environment and theircontext their daily lives, right?
And so what that serves is that when, whenyou bring all of those pictures together,
think you can facilitate a discussionon how similar our daily lives are and
how the things that we are worried aboutare the same, even though we come from a
(16:57):
different social group or that, or eventhough we come from a different region or
even though we have different ideologies.
And so that, I think,facilitates discussion.
It's a bit of finding common interests.
But what I find with these methods isthat they are, let's say, intentional.
We ask people to intentionally takephotographs of their environment.
(17:18):
And so by doing that, I think we'rechanging their mindset already, right?
And they're already becoming reflectiveof their environment and of their
context and what conflict means to them.
And that has a use in itself.
But what I want to see is, okay.
If we're not thinking of conflict orif we're not in that mindset of let's
(17:39):
try to transform our conflict, then whatdo we imagine to be conflict or what
do we imagine to be equality or peace?
I think we would have to do a bitof trying to find what are the
keywords that we associate withPS or with conflict, and then see
how we transform that into images.
I think if we do that, then we canhave a more comprehensive image
(18:00):
of conflict as opposed to givingpeople cameras and then asking them
to go out and taking pictures.
Laura May (18:07):
Mm.
And so if you were to use this methodor a method like it, depending on what
Instagram does to analyze conflict, Imean, do you think that there's some
types of social conflict or broaderconflict that would be easier or more
visible perhaps to analyze than others?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (18:24):
Yeah, and what we've would find absolutely
are images of protests, for example.
Or social movementsand activist campaigns.
But again, I find that if we'repicturing those things, we're already
ready to engage in a discussion withthose And I think what, where social
(18:45):
media excels is actually in enablinga deeper conversation, or it should
enable that deeper conversation, right?
Because at the end of the day,it's very polarized and we all post
images that are radically different.
But if we can identify how we discussthese things on our daily lives, not
just when we're out protesting or not,just when it's time to go vote for
(19:06):
the elections, but actually the day-to.
What sort of image do we post whenwe feel we are at peace and when
we feel we're not in conflict?
And what types of images do people wholive in conflict post that relate, first
of all to the conflict itself, but alsoto the daily reality within that conflict?
(19:27):
I think that would be quite interesting.
Laura May (19:30):
And I think, I guess it would be really difficult to
untangle that formity though, right?
You know, where we all pretend onInstagram that our life is fabulous
and wonderful and we never feel sad.
As opposed to, oh, daily reality ofperhaps you are in a conflict zone or
perhaps you're going through somethingthat you're choosing not to depict because
it's not perhaps acceptable in some way.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (19:51):
Yeah.
And that's one of the challengesof Instagram in particular, but of
all social media, is that theseare mediated spaces, And they're
mediated by lots of different things.
First of all, by the algorithms thatsimply make some images more visible.
And so we become accustomed to them and weincorporate them into our own imagination.
(20:11):
They're mediated by thepeople that we speak to.
So when you look at the stories,for example, that someone posts for
their close friends, where you havethat little green star and for the
general public, those are not the same.
And we're all the time becoming more andmore aware of the importance of privacy.
(20:32):
And so it's more complex to disentanglewhat are we actually portraying or what
are we actually trying to show to theworld without any thinking behind it?
And what is actually a very planned image.
Laura May (20:48):
Mm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (20:48):
And then one way that I think we can, mitigate
that challenge or that limitationis by looking at profiles that are
not the profiles of influencers.
And that in itself is a challengeaccessing those profiles is even more
complicated because you can't access themthrough, let's say, the official platforms
provided by meta or by other providers.
Laura May (21:12):
Mm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (21:12):
otherwise, what we're consuming constantly is
the decos of people who have morethan 50,000 followers which in
itself doesn't speak of daily lives.
So
Laura May (21:23):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so one of the things that reallystrikes me as we're talking about
images and conflict and who's sayingthem, is the recent campaign by Doctors
Without Borders to be more inclusivein terms of who they are showing as
doctors working in different countries.
Because typically it's been avery much a white savior complex
(21:46):
type of situation, right?
Like, here's these white doctors goingto this poor country, saving lives.
Yay.
And it was close to home for me becauseI remember my first experience, my first
confrontation with what I would nowcall structural racism when I was a kid.
Right?
And I've shared this with students beforeand I always feel very icky talking
(22:07):
about it, but I was in primary school.
So during the massacres in formerYugoslavia, and we heard about Bosnian
refugees over and over and overagain, there was constant drives, you
know, in my, in my primary school,the other end of the world, right?
There's all these drives forclothes or for canned goods or
whatever for Bosnian refugees.
(22:29):
And I remember the first time I sawvideo of these refugees, and again, I
was probably like nine years old, right?
And they were white.
And I remember being so shocked andconfused because every image I had ever
seen of a refugee, you know, it wasall the sort of world vision stuff.
It was always starving black children.
(22:51):
And so I remember just beingvery confronted about this.
Like, oh, what this is,this is a mismatch here.
Like what's going on here?
And it's incredible howpowerful these images can be.
And I mean, I'm glad that I'veinterrogated that since, right?
And I don't think I'm, I don't think I'min a white savior complex kind of zone,
but when you are doing analysis of thesedifferent images and conflict, there
(23:15):
are these really underlying discourseswhich say, oh, these people can be shown
in this way and these people can't.
Or, you know, men, commissioners warriors,and then women can't, or whatever.
Or this type of violence is legitimateand part of the war, or part of the
conflict and this type of violence,which is, you know, assaults in camps
or, lowered access to medical careand therefore dying of whatever,
(23:37):
this is not part of the conflict.
And so, it just really strikes methat this subject that you've chosen
to study is incredibly complex,incredibly difficult, but also incredibly
important and meaningful in an era inwhich we, to an extent, circumscribe
the types of things that we see.
So, huge kudos on that.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (23:56):
Thank you.
No, but look, there's, there's somuch to discuss here and I think the
people who have worked in the fieldof development cooperation have been
struggling with this for a long time.
Doctors Without Borders are an example.
Save the Children are another exampleof organizations that have their visual
guidelines and guidelines on what isacceptable and what is not acceptable
(24:17):
when it comes to photographic practicesin the development corporation world.
Right?
And so when you look back at thoseimages from the nineties and even before,
absolutely they were shock imagesand images that were meant to portray
a specific population as receiversof development assistance and a d.
(24:39):
Population as providers.
Right.
And that, that whole discoursehas changed thankfully.
Not just the visual discourse,but also the practices of NGOs
like these and , how we work.
But um, I found it interesting, and I amsure you've heard this in your country,
but here in Spain when this currentphase of the Russian War on Ukraine
(25:00):
started one of the things that people weresaying in the media and in the news, in
these programs where, you know, they bringseveral experts to talk to each other.
And so one of the things they were sayingis, well, these are people like us.
And that's struck me as,what do you mean ? like us?
And obviously what they meant were whitepeople who were living in, in cities
(25:23):
like Madrid, so, so to speak, with 6million inhabitants and who would go
downstairs to grab a hipster coffee.
And suddenly they findthemselves being bombarded.
And so I think what that did for themand for the people speaking in that
program was it brought it home andYou know, I think the fact that we're
(25:43):
questioning that means that we haven'tbeen exposed at least, or at least
we don't feel like we've been exposedto conflict in our own environment.
Or at least we don't understand whatit's like precisely because what
we've been seeing for the last 30to 40 years is conflict elsewhere.
Conflict affecting people wholook different from us, right?
Who different skin color, whodress differently, who live in
(26:06):
houses that are different to ours.
And at a minimum, being able tochallenge that conception means that we
are now more sensitive to really means.
So that's the first thingthat I wanted to say.
So that Development corporationhas a struggle with this for a long
time, and we're trying to move awayfrom what we call shock imaging.
And I found out in my thesis, forexample, one of the things I remember
(26:29):
submitting a paper, a super long, boringpaper It was a systematic, systematic
review on studies done of social media,images of cat, so I took everything
that was out there and tried to see,okay, what are we talking about here?
And one of the conclusions that Ireached was that we had to produce
images that were more inclusive.
(26:50):
And I suggested that that meant alsorepresenting the bad side of cancer.
And you can exchange cancer byconflict, for or any other topic.
And one of the reviewerstold me, Wouldn't we then
fall back into shock images?
So wouldn't we then fall back intoimages like those that we used with
(27:11):
with the AIDS epidemic for example,where we showed people who were very
ill and who were very, sufferingfrom cancer in this case, and then
wouldn't we stigmatize cancer patients?
And so it's a very difficult balance.
And I think it's one thing thatdocumentary photographers and
photojournalist struggle with allthe time is, do we show reality?
(27:33):
Do we show reality as we interpret it?
Do we translate that realityinto a different discourse?
And for us in particular whowork in dialogue and mediation
and this whole peace world, Ialways wonder what do we do?
we discuss and do we visualizeconflict as is, do we reframe it right?
(27:53):
Like we do with.
Text, do we transform it intosomething that gives hope and that
gives opportunities for the future?
It's, It's difficult.
I don't know where , where the answerlies, but where I think we can begin
is by looking at what people think andwhat people imagine to be conflict.
And so that's wheresocial media comes back.
(28:16):
For me . but obviously we have to becareful as to not to take what is in
social media as the absolute truth becausewe also know that that is not the truth.
Lots of challenges and barriers.
Laura May (28:27):
Absolutely.
And I've gotta say, I made the uh,profound mistake of reinstalling
Instagram a few days ago, andapparently the algorithm thinks that
I mostly wanna watch skiers fall over.
Um, So that's the really kind ofconflict I'm going for right now,
the snowboarder, skier conflict.
Anyway, anyway.
So what confuses me a little bitis you've been doing this work on
(28:48):
social media and images of cancer,but before this, you were spending a
decade or even more in peace mediation.
Like what?
What gives what?
What was the jump about?
How did you go from one to the other?
Did they actually meetsomewhere in the middle?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (29:03):
uh, That's a question I've been
struggling with for some time now.
The nexus, the thing that connectsthe two for me is photography.
And is social media.
So I've been a photographer, so to speak.
I've done some professional work onphotography, but mostly as a hobby my
whole life since I was about 14 years old.
(29:24):
And I've always found that pictures areextremely powerful at communicating the
things that we care about at communicatinghidden messages or they stay with us.
Right.
I remember my former boss and dearfriend, auntie Herberg, with whom we
did trainings, and she used photographsand tried to get people to describe
what they saw in those photographsand to put it in relation with peace.
(29:46):
So photographs have alwaysbeen very, very curious about.
And then social media and anddigital technologies came in and
obviously I'm a digital native.
I'm already quite old.
You know, nothing, the,the, the Gen Z are better.
Laura May (30:01):
You don't look old at all.
You look.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (30:03):
Well, but, but I'm older than my students and,
and they, they tell me about allof these platforms that they use.
I'm like, huh, what is that?
But anyway and so in 2014 was thefirst time that I approached social
media and digital technologiesfor PS and I found that yes,
okay, we're doing lots with text.
We were not doing anything with images.
(30:24):
So I became interested in this.
When I started thinking of my PhD, Iwanted to find a topic that was very,
very easy in a sense to visualize.
And that at the same time, whilebeing very easy to visualize,
was very non-visual sense.
Cuz cancer is not somethingyou can photograph immediately.
you can't photograph canceras such unless you go into the
(30:47):
body and then take a picture.
Right.
And so,
Laura May (30:50):
with the ethics board, right?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (30:51):
yeah, exactly.
I'm probably, they probablywon't let me do that.
And so I thought, well, let me find atopic where I can find polarization quite
easily without going into politics orwithout conducting a case study like I
would with, if I studied, for example,images of war in Ukraine, or images
of refugees, or this type of thing.
(31:12):
So I thought, well, let me use that case.
Let me build the method and thenlet me see if I can bring this
back into the peace building world.
Will I be able to do so?
I don't know.
Will I continue working on cancer?
For sure, I will, but I'm alreadyseeing opportunities there.
Laura May (31:28):
Let's take a bit of a pivot then and talk a bit about technology and
mediation more broadly, because I knowthat this is something you've actually
written about before in the book.
Rethinking Peace Mediation.
So when you're talking abouttechnology and peace mediation,
what technologies beyond ourInstagram feed are we talking about?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (31:49):
You know, I remember in 2016, I gave a talk.
I was young and naive, and I knew nothing.
I still know nothingbut even less back then.
And um, I remember participating in theBuild Peas conference, which is fantastic
conference that happens every year on thenexus between technology peas and arts.
And we were having a groupdiscussion and there was an engineer
(32:11):
there and I kept talking abouttechnology, technology, technology.
And he stopped me at one pointand he said, what do you mean?
And I thought to myself, whatdo you mean rude And he said,
no, but what do you mean?
Are you talking aboutdigital technologies?
So cell phones or websites or are youtalking about he told me water wells,
(32:31):
for example, those are technology.
So what do you actually mean?
And I found that my understandingof technology, So limited.
I only meant websites,basically, or web applications.
And it's typically whatwe talk about, right?
What I mean, or what I wrote inthat chapter that I had the chance to
contribute was about digital technologyand specifically about technologies that
(32:56):
enable communication between people in a,in a very rapid and very immediate way.
What we call iCTs informationalcommunication Technologies.
But do I extend that then to satellitesor you know, infrastructures and so on?
No, cause I don't know how toeven begin thinking about that.
I mean, essentially applications likeInstagram, like WhatsApp, like WeChat,
(33:20):
signal, telegram, all of these things.
Laura May (33:22):
Okay.
So you've clarified then forme what these technologies
were that you're talking about.
So how can we use things likeapps or like websites in peace?
Mediation and conflict work?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (33:34):
There are different phases in the conflict
mediation process or the dialogueprocess that we can use them for.
And the first is analyzingthe context and understanding
what are we dealing with.
And their information technologiesare crucial because they're a
very quick way to put your fingeron the pulse on what's going on.
(33:55):
I remember doing that in Ukraine in 2018.
Whether a reforms process that wasongoing at the time, trying to get an
understanding of how people felt aboutthat reforms process and what they thought
were the topics were the the governmentof the time needed to put more effort.
So it's a very quick way.
It's not going to give youthe full answer though.
(34:15):
You're just going to get a quantitativeanswer on what's on social media.
And we all know that on socialmedia, we find two things.
We find lots and lots of content,which is extremely polarized
and increasingly more so.
But it's a point where you can start.
It's also a very good tool.
I think these information andcommunication technologies are
(34:35):
great tools to communicate progresswhen it is reasonable to do so.
And we know that it's not alwaysreasonable to do so and not advisable,
but uh, Here we also have tonegotiate with our own processes.
How much can we disclose and how muchcan we not communicate to the public when
they're expecting us to make progress?
And in there negotiators and mediatorsand mediation experts could tell
(34:58):
you, well, here we can releasea little piece of information.
We can share some pictures.
But at least establishing that bridgebetween the people who are meant to
benefit from the mediation processand those who are spearhead in it.
And at the same time, thirdly isabout collecting impressions and
collecting knowledge from people andincluding them into that conversation.
(35:21):
I've seen that done in Colombia, forexample, with a project that was
called , the largest conversation onEarth, where it was a fantastic website
where people were asked questions thatwere fundamental to the peace process,
and they were meant to contribute theirideas not through a voting system as such,
but a system of pros and cons of everyproposal and then developing on those.
(35:45):
But it was a great way forpeople to feel involved.
But it, it can also go out of handand where do you set the limits?
But I would say then collectinga quick image of what's going on.
Communicate in progress and thengetting feedback from the different
constituencies are at least three waysin which information and communication
(36:06):
technologies can be helpful.
Laura May (36:08):
In commercial mediation world, there's increasing interest
in online dispute resolution, so theprocess is actually going online and
also in the use of AI and machinelearning to actually facilitate.
Do you think that these are technologiesthat we would ever see in peace media?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (36:25):
Yeah, I'm, I'm sure there are people
who have been working on this.
I could think of, Andrea probably haslooked into this Martin Wesh as well.
I have to say, I'm a bit of an agnosticwhen it comes to artificial intelligence.
As a professor.
I struggle with artificial intelligencenow every day because our students
use it to , produce their papers,and it's incredibly powerful.
(36:48):
But I think if we understand thatmediation and dialogue are profoundly
human processes that need that one-to-one,and it's one of the things that we've
struggled with in the last two yearswith the whole pandemic and virtual
facilitation and virtual sessions.
I wonder how can artificial intelligencehelp us maintain or re strengthen
(37:12):
that human aspect of the mediationprocess and the dialogue process.
And I'm still not sure.
I, I don't know how they could do it.
Laura May (37:21):
Yeah, I, I'm in the same boat.
I, I mean, I've done sometraining with a I as well.
And yeah, I'm very, I'm very deeplycynical, even if it's using in commercial
mediation, because there's this sayingthat garbage in, garbage out, right?
And so AI is trained on all of this data,and if there's biases or problems in
the data, then it's actually replicatedin the solutions that AI suggests.
(37:43):
It's like with chat G p T, you know, sopeople have started putting all these
cynical articles up about going, oh,here's all this garbage that it spa out.
It was very authoritative in tone,but it means absolutely nonsense.
And so I, I am concerned thatwe'll see that kind of thing
actually in mediation itself.
But it sounds like you're not too alarmedabout it for peace mediation at least
just yet because of the, perhaps profound.
(38:05):
human component.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (38:08):
Yeah, well, there's a fundamental truth in artificial
intelligence, and that's that the morewe use it, the better it will get.
And I've seen it, for example, I hada colleague whose name is Juan, who
worked on training models to detectships on the sea or to detect anything.
And I think when the content of what youare working on is very static, or at a
(38:30):
minimum it is very identifiable, thenI'm sure artificial intelligence can be
trained perfectly well to identify thoseitems . But if we understand that conflict
is so, it's based on perception and thatthose perceptions change constantly and
that those perceptions depend on a series.
(38:51):
Basic needs that we all have, but notonly basic needs, but psychological
needs and emotional needs that areconstantly going to be changing.
I just think artificial intelligence isprobably going to be playing catch up
all the time to try and get to a pointwhere they can understand conflict.
We don't understand conflict, atall, and so we're just trying to
(39:12):
deal with it as best as we can.
But one thing that they probably can dois work on making communications more
sensitive or making communications moreattuned to some of the principles that we
have in non-violent communications, forinstance, or to comply, let's say with
un principles for mediation processes,this kind of thing they can probably help
(39:35):
us with and they can make that processquicker or at least easier for everyone.
Right.
And I'm just thinking out loud here, but.
Potential project could be trying to get.
And I think I've seen something like this,trying to get a artificial intelligence
to reinterpret a piece of communicationand to transform it into non-violent
communication or into non-biasedcommunication, that type of thing.
(39:59):
We can look that up cause I'msure there is something like that.
Laura May (40:03):
I feel like I could use that
you know, Miguel, thank youso much for joining me today.
And for those who are interestedin learning more about your
work, where can they find you?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (40:13):
Look, look, thank you so much for having me.
That was fun.
I think LinkedIn is probablythe best, , best place.
do have a website, but I keepchanging the domain all the time
because I'm always very you knowinsecure as to what it should be.
But they can find me on LinkedInby, using my whole name and hopefully
I'll be the first to pop up.
(40:33):
But if there's someone else, thenmaybe they are interested as well.
Laura May (40:37):
I like this.
Brilliant.
Well look, thanks again forjoining me and for everyone else.
Until next time.
This is Laura May with a conflictchipping podcast from mediate.com.
hello and welcome to the conflict tipping podcast,
from mediate.com, the podcastthat explores social conflict
and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, andtoday I have with me newly
minted Doctor Miguel Rodriguez.
Adjunct professor at the Departmentof Sociology and social work at the
University of Via Dalid in Spain,associate with conciliation resources
(00:34):
and former advisor at Mediater.
His work lies at the intersectionof peace work and visual media, and
he's just told me he doesn't likespeaking, so I'm very excited to
have him here on a podcast with me.
So welcome, Miguel.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (00:47):
Hi Lara.
It's a pleasure to be here and wonderfulpronunciation of all those Spanish words,
Laura May (00:53):
Yes.
Yes, you do.
. Exciting.
All right.
Look, I'm really happyand happy to hear as well.
I won't be speaking Spanish inthe podcast because I feel like
that's a whole other series.
But I wanna jump straight in and askyou about this doctoral research you've
just finished, because I understand itwas to do with imagery and social media.
(01:13):
So what was it actually about?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (01:15):
Yeah, no, that's the basis of it.
It's primarily about imagesof cancer on Instagram, right.
But it's really a projectdedicated to seeing how we can
investigate images in social media.
And the reason that I did that was thatI felt a lot of the work that we do on
social media is about text and how wewrite and how we communicate through text.
(01:38):
And I wanted to see, well, isthere something else that we do?
Because I think that a lot of thecontent we consume in social media
apart from video, are images.
Those are the things that stick with us.
And so I found that the topic ofcancer was a very good topic to explore
this, because number one, it's gota very, very clear visual identity.
(01:59):
We all sort of have images of what thecancer patient looks like, especially when
we think of patients of breast cancer.
And number two, because I just felt apersonal impulse to work on that topic.
So what I did was I looked into Instagram,see what images are there that mention
words related to cancer, see how I couldaccess them and how I could study them.
(02:25):
And then based on that, try toidentify a series of what we call
visual disc discourses, common imagesor images that we commonly produce
to talk about a specific topic.
In this case, cancer.
Laura May (02:38):
Interesting.
And so you must have had to filter out alot of star sign related content, right?
If you are going.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (02:46):
Yeah, yeah, no, that was one of the problems.
And it's a typical problem whenyou're dealing with social media is,
is what is and what is not relevant.
this particular case, when it came tothings related the the cancer sign, it
was quite easy because there were lots ofmemes lots of very visually identifiable
(03:06):
images that did not relate to cancer.
But I also found another kind of imagethat was, let's say, jokes about cancer.
Not about people who have cancer,but about the prospects of having
cancer and those having to domainly with tobacco and smoking.
So yes, you do have todo a lot of filtering.
(03:26):
Unfortu.
Laura May (03:28):
And this is actually making me really curious cuz you've just
described the visual discourse of cancerpatients and what that can look like.
I mean, is this whole tobaccocancer discourse another way
of portraying cancer visually?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (03:41):
Well, yeah.
See there are many different discoursesof cancer and I would, typically
categorize them between dis discoursesused by organizations, dis discourses,
used by patients dis discourses,used by, let's say, the public.
So those who are not working oncancer and those who do not suffer
from cancer, whether it's on theirbodies or in their social circles.
(04:04):
And then we also have disdiscourses depending on the types of
emotions that we want to generate.
Positive or negative, and even on whatwe want to achieve with those discourses.
So if it's just to express ourselves,if it's to show support or if it's
to pre mitigate certain behaviorsthat we know are related to cancer.
(04:26):
And so when it comes to those lastones, I do see lots of images that
are meant to create fear, so to speak,images of people who smoke and then
have cancer, that type of thing.
But yeah, they, they're very different.
All of those discourses and they're quitecomplicated to separate from each other.
Laura May (04:46):
Hmm.
And so let's go back then to the visualidentity of cancer patients, right?
Because you just said that theywere really distinct in how
they're portrayed, and you saidparticularly breast cancer patients.
So what are the things weassociate with with breast cancer?
Images?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (05:02):
Well, when you look back at the literature and what's
been done since the seventies, there'sbeen quite a bit of pushback against a
certain image of a breast cancer patientwho is a, a very feminine, very happy
typically beautiful woman with makeup.
Right?
And so since the seventies, I would saythere's been a lot of production in terms
(05:24):
of academic research, but also activistwork to try and portray different images
of the breast cancer patient fromwomen who have suffered from mastectomy
to women who just do not identifywith that whole discourse of let me be
feminine and let me fight this cancer.
Right?
And so those dis discourses are moreinclusive, but what I see is, They
(05:48):
stay within a small realm, which is therealm of activism, the realm of actual
patients who then make their voice heard.
But when you look at commercial campaigns,those campaigns that are meant to support
research or to support patients ingeneral, they still deploy that image.
And, and this has been ongoing since at,at the very minimum, since the 1970s.
(06:12):
And it doesn't seem like it's stop it,except when you look at the communications
of cancer related organizations.
So here in Spain, we have a Spanishsociety Against Cancer who are now trying
to generate a whole different image,being very conscious of this, right?
That we, we have to portraycancer in knowledge.
(06:32):
All of its experience,not just one experience.
That also aligns with these coursesthat are fairly standardized.
Laura May (06:40):
And I find it really curious that you just mentioned that even within
the activist portrayals of breast cancerand images of breast cancer patients, it's
still about reclaiming femininity or beingfeminine, and then of course excludes
images of men with breast cancer, right?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (06:59):
Well, yeah, I wouldn't say it's about reclaiming
femininity or, or it's, it's aboutdiscussing what that means, right?
So yes, it is about reclaimingit, but it's about portraying
women as Diverse as women are.
Right?
And so if you look at the work ofJoey Spence, for example, who was
a photographer who suffered frombreast cancer, she typically showed
(07:22):
herself or she pictured herself witha lot of inscriptions written by
hand on her chest, questioning theownership of her breasts and saying,
well, is this a medical product?
Is this a product of of society?
Is this a commercial?
Is this me?
And when you look, for example, alsoat the work of Maka who suffered
from a breast cancer and wasmastectomies, she was the first woman
(07:46):
ever in the US to be presented as amastectomies woman in a magazine cover.
And this was in the nineties, in theearly nineties, and it generated lot.
Steam because people were quiteangry that the New York Times
would be showing such an image.
So it is about having that discussionand let's say taken back that identity,
(08:09):
right from the commercial image that waspurely, it was based on pink, it was
based makeup, it was based on the smile,and there was no room for anything else.
Laura May (08:20):
it's like, oh, I'm so happy I had something that might kill me.
like, what a great outcome.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (08:24):
Yeah.
But, but look, there's also, and I'vestruggled with this as I was writing and,
and doing my research because that'sknown as the decos of survivorship, right?
The idea that if you face it with optimismand with hope, you have a better prospect.
And it does help a lot of people becauseit provides you with hope for the future.
(08:44):
And it helps you get up in themorning and say, let me continue.
Let me have my breakfast.
Let me stand up, let me go out.
Even though yesterdayI had a very bad day.
And so it's positive for lotsof people, but not for everyone.
And so by standardizing that image incommercial campaigns and in the media,
(09:05):
we're leaving other people out andwe're telling them, no, your experience
is not valid because it doesn'tconform with what we're showing here.
Right.
And so there's been quite a bit ofwork done with women in particular
because lots of the work that isdone on let's say the social aspects
of cancer is done on breast cancer.
And so lots of women say, well, I, Idon't feel like I'm free to be exhausted.
(09:29):
Like, I feel right.
I don't feel like I'mfree to complain now.
I don't feel like I'm freeto feel as bad as I do.
Because I have this pressure on me,not only from commercial campaigns,
not only from the media, but from myloved ones who have consumed and been
exposed to that discourse their wholelives, and so they now expect of me
(09:51):
to deploy that discourse as well.
So I thought it was aninteresting area to be looking at
Laura May (09:57):
Absolutely.
And for me it's really interestingbecause, I mean, I'm slightly out of
the right age group just yet to knowa lot of people with breast cancer.
So the only people I know thathave had a mastectomy were one
person who did have breast cancer,and she said, Nope, lop 'em off.
And that was her phrasing.
I'm like, all right, cool.
Go for it.
And then, of course, trans men as well.
(10:18):
And so this is really my onlycontext in which I've seen
that at this point in my life.
And so for me, thismakes it really curious.
You know, as I get older and as moreof my friends probably will presumably
have breast cancer whether we'll seea shift in those discourses about
how you can be to have breast cancer.
And again, I wanna include men inthat as well, cuz as you've just
highlighted yourself these images arestill about women, which is really
(10:42):
fascinating . Forgive me for alwayshaving my intersectional feminist lens on.
I'm like, all right, so,
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (10:46):
No, that's superb and we haven't talked about that.
And sometimes when I speak aboutfeminism, I feel like an intruder.
But it is a profoundly feminist thesis.
At the end of day, it's all aboutquestioning, standardized images of
women and what being a woman means.
And it's not out of,out of women that I do.
So it's because breast cancer isthe most represented type of cancer.
(11:08):
When I went on social media, I foundabout 40 million images in total
that contained the keyword cancer.
And by and extrapolation, I foundthat breast cancer was more than
10 times more often visualized thanall other types of cancer combined.
Laura May (11:24):
By the way, for me, feminism includes men.
It's about everyone who'staking down the patriarchy.
So yeah, I'm not anexclusionary feminist.
Anyway, so that's a whole other thing.
Anyway.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (11:34):
What I also find interesting about this
is that obviously breast cancer is.
One of the most visible, mostprevalent types of cancer, but
it's not the only type of cancer.
But what seems to have happened is thatthe discourse of survivorship, which
wa became, let's say activated withbreast cancer has, I call it, it has
(11:55):
infiltrated all other types of cancer.
So all representations ofany other type of cancer.
And when we activate that conceptin our mind, right, we immediately
associate it with breast cancer becausethere's been a commercial use of that.
Group of illnesses to sort ofportray women in a particular way.
(12:16):
And so it's not surprising thatlots of the literature around this
is written by feminist authors whoquestion this idea and who also wonder,
well, is there nothing else that wecan talk about when it comes to cancer?
What about people who suffer frompancreatic cancer or from lung cancer
or from prostate cancer, right?
Because when you look at the discourseof types of cancer that affect men,
(12:40):
primarily as would be the case withbreast cancer for women what I'm seeing
is that increasingly we're moving inthe same direction in the direction
of creating gendered discourses.
And so what I found, and I'm stillto do more research on this, is that.
When we produce images of prostate cancer,we now produce images of men holding,
(13:03):
literally holding hammers and ready to,you know, be strong and a mustache and
with their muscles or out in nature.
And so we're going in thesame direction, right?
It's and it's, well, there areplenty of reasons for that, but
I, the first one is that I thinkwhen it comes to visual discourses,
it's so easy and so comfortable toactivate standardized discourses.
(13:26):
And so, well, look, we're talkingabout men here, so let's use what's
typically thought to be a man, right?
Someone who's strong and, andwith a beard and all of that.
And and it's what we've been doingwith breast cancer and it's brought
us to a point where we now question it.
So why do it for other types of cancer?
Laura May (13:44):
You know, as you were describing this image of the, these
are men that have prostate cancer.
All I could think aboutwas dating profiles.
I think the only things you missedwere like holding a giant fish.
Right.
That's apparently thepinnacle of masculinities.
You
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (13:59):
it's um, but one of the things that I've struggled with
in this project is obviously the, theknowledge that I'm a bit of an intruder
because even though I'm doing research oncancer generally, because lots of the work
is Don and Bryce Cancer, it's somethingthat I probably won't suffer in my life.
It does affect men, butit's at a minimal rate.
(14:19):
I haven't had any personalexperiences of cancer.
And so I do feel very much like anintruder there, but I've been trying
to move into a realm that is a bitcloser to me, which is the prospect
of prostate cancer and also the wholeNovember movement, which at its origin was
closely linked to prostate cancer, butnow I find has diluted that message into
(14:43):
health issues that affect men in general.
And so I think it's precisely bydoing that, that we have translated
it into a fairly normativediscourse of what being a man is.
And so I do struggle a bit with, withthis is the, it's the, the whole point
of studying social issues, right?
It's they affect you and, and howyou perceive , how you perceive them.
(15:07):
And so it's quite difficultto stay neutral in that
sense, or impartial, at least
Laura May (15:12):
Absolutely.
Okay.
So now that you've come up withthis method though, right, as far as
analyzing visual discourse via socialmedia, what other kinds of things
could we actually apply that to?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (15:24):
Well, look, I've come up with a method.
The problem is that method tomorrowprobably won't work and it's . That's
a reality of, of social media research,that constantly, all of these things that
we know as APIs are basically the backdoor to enter a social media platform.
They're constantly closed.
They're constantly locked.
(15:46):
But if we can maintain some ofit, at least the principle of
how we approach it is sequencing.
We could apply it to pretty muchanything that has to do with
how we imagine social issues.
is how we translate into photographsor into drawings, or even into memes.
Things that are deeply, deeply personal,and that affects society as a whole.
(16:10):
And so one of the things thatI think we can apply it to is
how do we understand conflict?
What do we visuallyassociate with conflict?
And there's been quite a bit ofwork in the past done on trying to
use photography or actually usingphotography in in mediation contexts or
in dialogue context through photo voice.
And all of these methods thatare, I think, are fascinating.
Laura May (16:34):
Mm-hmm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (16:34):
And typically it's about photographing
their environment and theircontext their daily lives, right?
And so what that serves is that when, whenyou bring all of those pictures together,
think you can facilitate a discussionon how similar our daily lives are and
how the things that we are worried aboutare the same, even though we come from a
(16:57):
different social group or that, or eventhough we come from a different region or
even though we have different ideologies.
And so that, I think,facilitates discussion.
It's a bit of finding common interests.
But what I find with these methods isthat they are, let's say, intentional.
We ask people to intentionally takephotographs of their environment.
(17:18):
And so by doing that, I think we'rechanging their mindset already, right?
And they're already becoming reflectiveof their environment and of their
context and what conflict means to them.
And that has a use in itself.
But what I want to see is, okay.
If we're not thinking of conflict orif we're not in that mindset of let's
(17:39):
try to transform our conflict, then whatdo we imagine to be conflict or what
do we imagine to be equality or peace?
I think we would have to do a bitof trying to find what are the
keywords that we associate withPS or with conflict, and then see
how we transform that into images.
I think if we do that, then we canhave a more comprehensive image
(18:00):
of conflict as opposed to givingpeople cameras and then asking them
to go out and taking pictures.
Laura May (18:07):
Mm.
And so if you were to use this methodor a method like it, depending on what
Instagram does to analyze conflict, Imean, do you think that there's some
types of social conflict or broaderconflict that would be easier or more
visible perhaps to analyze than others?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (18:24):
Yeah, and what we've would find absolutely
are images of protests, for example.
Or social movementsand activist campaigns.
But again, I find that if we'repicturing those things, we're already
ready to engage in a discussion withthose And I think what, where social
(18:45):
media excels is actually in enablinga deeper conversation, or it should
enable that deeper conversation, right?
Because at the end of the day,it's very polarized and we all post
images that are radically different.
But if we can identify how we discussthese things on our daily lives, not
just when we're out protesting or not,just when it's time to go vote for
(19:06):
the elections, but actually the day-to.
What sort of image do we post whenwe feel we are at peace and when
we feel we're not in conflict?
And what types of images do people wholive in conflict post that relate, first
of all to the conflict itself, but alsoto the daily reality within that conflict?
(19:27):
I think that would be quite interesting.
Laura May (19:30):
And I think, I guess it would be really difficult to
untangle that formity though, right?
You know, where we all pretend onInstagram that our life is fabulous
and wonderful and we never feel sad.
As opposed to, oh, daily reality ofperhaps you are in a conflict zone or
perhaps you're going through somethingthat you're choosing not to depict because
it's not perhaps acceptable in some way.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (19:51):
Yeah.
And that's one of the challengesof Instagram in particular, but of
all social media, is that theseare mediated spaces, And they're
mediated by lots of different things.
First of all, by the algorithms thatsimply make some images more visible.
And so we become accustomed to them and weincorporate them into our own imagination.
(20:11):
They're mediated by thepeople that we speak to.
So when you look at the stories,for example, that someone posts for
their close friends, where you havethat little green star and for the
general public, those are not the same.
And we're all the time becoming more andmore aware of the importance of privacy.
(20:32):
And so it's more complex to disentanglewhat are we actually portraying or what
are we actually trying to show to theworld without any thinking behind it?
And what is actually a very planned image.
Laura May (20:48):
Mm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (20:48):
And then one way that I think we can, mitigate
that challenge or that limitationis by looking at profiles that are
not the profiles of influencers.
And that in itself is a challengeaccessing those profiles is even more
complicated because you can't access themthrough, let's say, the official platforms
provided by meta or by other providers.
Laura May (21:12):
Mm.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (21:12):
otherwise, what we're consuming constantly is
the decos of people who have morethan 50,000 followers which in
itself doesn't speak of daily lives.
So
Laura May (21:23):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so one of the things that reallystrikes me as we're talking about
images and conflict and who's sayingthem, is the recent campaign by Doctors
Without Borders to be more inclusivein terms of who they are showing as
doctors working in different countries.
Because typically it's been avery much a white savior complex
(21:46):
type of situation, right?
Like, here's these white doctors goingto this poor country, saving lives.
Yay.
And it was close to home for me becauseI remember my first experience, my first
confrontation with what I would nowcall structural racism when I was a kid.
Right?
And I've shared this with students beforeand I always feel very icky talking
(22:07):
about it, but I was in primary school.
So during the massacres in formerYugoslavia, and we heard about Bosnian
refugees over and over and overagain, there was constant drives, you
know, in my, in my primary school,the other end of the world, right?
There's all these drives forclothes or for canned goods or
whatever for Bosnian refugees.
(22:29):
And I remember the first time I sawvideo of these refugees, and again, I
was probably like nine years old, right?
And they were white.
And I remember being so shocked andconfused because every image I had ever
seen of a refugee, you know, it wasall the sort of world vision stuff.
It was always starving black children.
(22:51):
And so I remember just beingvery confronted about this.
Like, oh, what this is,this is a mismatch here.
Like what's going on here?
And it's incredible howpowerful these images can be.
And I mean, I'm glad that I'veinterrogated that since, right?
And I don't think I'm, I don't think I'min a white savior complex kind of zone,
but when you are doing analysis of thesedifferent images and conflict, there
(23:15):
are these really underlying discourseswhich say, oh, these people can be shown
in this way and these people can't.
Or, you know, men, commissioners warriors,and then women can't, or whatever.
Or this type of violence is legitimateand part of the war, or part of the
conflict and this type of violence,which is, you know, assaults in camps
or, lowered access to medical careand therefore dying of whatever,
(23:37):
this is not part of the conflict.
And so, it just really strikes methat this subject that you've chosen
to study is incredibly complex,incredibly difficult, but also incredibly
important and meaningful in an era inwhich we, to an extent, circumscribe
the types of things that we see.
So, huge kudos on that.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (23:56):
Thank you.
No, but look, there's, there's somuch to discuss here and I think the
people who have worked in the fieldof development cooperation have been
struggling with this for a long time.
Doctors Without Borders are an example.
Save the Children are another exampleof organizations that have their visual
guidelines and guidelines on what isacceptable and what is not acceptable
(24:17):
when it comes to photographic practicesin the development corporation world.
Right?
And so when you look back at thoseimages from the nineties and even before,
absolutely they were shock imagesand images that were meant to portray
a specific population as receiversof development assistance and a d.
(24:39):
Population as providers.
Right.
And that, that whole discoursehas changed thankfully.
Not just the visual discourse,but also the practices of NGOs
like these and , how we work.
But um, I found it interesting, and I amsure you've heard this in your country,
but here in Spain when this currentphase of the Russian War on Ukraine
(25:00):
started one of the things that people weresaying in the media and in the news, in
these programs where, you know, they bringseveral experts to talk to each other.
And so one of the things they were sayingis, well, these are people like us.
And that's struck me as,what do you mean ? like us?
And obviously what they meant were whitepeople who were living in, in cities
(25:23):
like Madrid, so, so to speak, with 6million inhabitants and who would go
downstairs to grab a hipster coffee.
And suddenly they findthemselves being bombarded.
And so I think what that did for themand for the people speaking in that
program was it brought it home andYou know, I think the fact that we're
(25:43):
questioning that means that we haven'tbeen exposed at least, or at least
we don't feel like we've been exposedto conflict in our own environment.
Or at least we don't understand whatit's like precisely because what
we've been seeing for the last 30to 40 years is conflict elsewhere.
Conflict affecting people wholook different from us, right?
Who different skin color, whodress differently, who live in
(26:06):
houses that are different to ours.
And at a minimum, being able tochallenge that conception means that we
are now more sensitive to really means.
So that's the first thingthat I wanted to say.
So that Development corporationhas a struggle with this for a long
time, and we're trying to move awayfrom what we call shock imaging.
And I found out in my thesis, forexample, one of the things I remember
(26:29):
submitting a paper, a super long, boringpaper It was a systematic, systematic
review on studies done of social media,images of cat, so I took everything
that was out there and tried to see,okay, what are we talking about here?
And one of the conclusions that Ireached was that we had to produce
images that were more inclusive.
(26:50):
And I suggested that that meant alsorepresenting the bad side of cancer.
And you can exchange cancer byconflict, for or any other topic.
And one of the reviewerstold me, Wouldn't we then
fall back into shock images?
So wouldn't we then fall back intoimages like those that we used with
(27:11):
with the AIDS epidemic for example,where we showed people who were very
ill and who were very, sufferingfrom cancer in this case, and then
wouldn't we stigmatize cancer patients?
And so it's a very difficult balance.
And I think it's one thing thatdocumentary photographers and
photojournalist struggle with allthe time is, do we show reality?
(27:33):
Do we show reality as we interpret it?
Do we translate that realityinto a different discourse?
And for us in particular whowork in dialogue and mediation
and this whole peace world, Ialways wonder what do we do?
we discuss and do we visualizeconflict as is, do we reframe it right?
(27:53):
Like we do with.
Text, do we transform it intosomething that gives hope and that
gives opportunities for the future?
It's, It's difficult.
I don't know where , where the answerlies, but where I think we can begin
is by looking at what people think andwhat people imagine to be conflict.
And so that's wheresocial media comes back.
(28:16):
For me . but obviously we have to becareful as to not to take what is in
social media as the absolute truth becausewe also know that that is not the truth.
Lots of challenges and barriers.
Laura May (28:27):
Absolutely.
And I've gotta say, I made the uh,profound mistake of reinstalling
Instagram a few days ago, andapparently the algorithm thinks that
I mostly wanna watch skiers fall over.
Um, So that's the really kind ofconflict I'm going for right now,
the snowboarder, skier conflict.
Anyway, anyway.
So what confuses me a little bitis you've been doing this work on
(28:48):
social media and images of cancer,but before this, you were spending a
decade or even more in peace mediation.
Like what?
What gives what?
What was the jump about?
How did you go from one to the other?
Did they actually meetsomewhere in the middle?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (29:03):
uh, That's a question I've been
struggling with for some time now.
The nexus, the thing that connectsthe two for me is photography.
And is social media.
So I've been a photographer, so to speak.
I've done some professional work onphotography, but mostly as a hobby my
whole life since I was about 14 years old.
(29:24):
And I've always found that pictures areextremely powerful at communicating the
things that we care about at communicatinghidden messages or they stay with us.
Right.
I remember my former boss and dearfriend, auntie Herberg, with whom we
did trainings, and she used photographsand tried to get people to describe
what they saw in those photographsand to put it in relation with peace.
(29:46):
So photographs have alwaysbeen very, very curious about.
And then social media and anddigital technologies came in and
obviously I'm a digital native.
I'm already quite old.
You know, nothing, the,the, the Gen Z are better.
Laura May (30:01):
You don't look old at all.
You look.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (30:03):
Well, but, but I'm older than my students and,
and they, they tell me about allof these platforms that they use.
I'm like, huh, what is that?
But anyway and so in 2014 was thefirst time that I approached social
media and digital technologiesfor PS and I found that yes,
okay, we're doing lots with text.
We were not doing anything with images.
(30:24):
So I became interested in this.
When I started thinking of my PhD, Iwanted to find a topic that was very,
very easy in a sense to visualize.
And that at the same time, whilebeing very easy to visualize,
was very non-visual sense.
Cuz cancer is not somethingyou can photograph immediately.
you can't photograph canceras such unless you go into the
(30:47):
body and then take a picture.
Right.
And so,
Laura May (30:50):
with the ethics board, right?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (30:51):
yeah, exactly.
I'm probably, they probablywon't let me do that.
And so I thought, well, let me find atopic where I can find polarization quite
easily without going into politics orwithout conducting a case study like I
would with, if I studied, for example,images of war in Ukraine, or images
of refugees, or this type of thing.
(31:12):
So I thought, well, let me use that case.
Let me build the method and thenlet me see if I can bring this
back into the peace building world.
Will I be able to do so?
I don't know.
Will I continue working on cancer?
For sure, I will, but I'm alreadyseeing opportunities there.
Laura May (31:28):
Let's take a bit of a pivot then and talk a bit about technology and
mediation more broadly, because I knowthat this is something you've actually
written about before in the book.
Rethinking Peace Mediation.
So when you're talking abouttechnology and peace mediation,
what technologies beyond ourInstagram feed are we talking about?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (31:49):
You know, I remember in 2016, I gave a talk.
I was young and naive, and I knew nothing.
I still know nothingbut even less back then.
And um, I remember participating in theBuild Peas conference, which is fantastic
conference that happens every year on thenexus between technology peas and arts.
And we were having a groupdiscussion and there was an engineer
(32:11):
there and I kept talking abouttechnology, technology, technology.
And he stopped me at one pointand he said, what do you mean?
And I thought to myself, whatdo you mean rude And he said,
no, but what do you mean?
Are you talking aboutdigital technologies?
So cell phones or websites or are youtalking about he told me water wells,
(32:31):
for example, those are technology.
So what do you actually mean?
And I found that my understandingof technology, So limited.
I only meant websites,basically, or web applications.
And it's typically whatwe talk about, right?
What I mean, or what I wrote inthat chapter that I had the chance to
contribute was about digital technologyand specifically about technologies that
(32:56):
enable communication between people in a,in a very rapid and very immediate way.
What we call iCTs informationalcommunication Technologies.
But do I extend that then to satellitesor you know, infrastructures and so on?
No, cause I don't know how toeven begin thinking about that.
I mean, essentially applications likeInstagram, like WhatsApp, like WeChat,
(33:20):
signal, telegram, all of these things.
Laura May (33:22):
Okay.
So you've clarified then forme what these technologies
were that you're talking about.
So how can we use things likeapps or like websites in peace?
Mediation and conflict work?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (33:34):
There are different phases in the conflict
mediation process or the dialogueprocess that we can use them for.
And the first is analyzingthe context and understanding
what are we dealing with.
And their information technologiesare crucial because they're a
very quick way to put your fingeron the pulse on what's going on.
(33:55):
I remember doing that in Ukraine in 2018.
Whether a reforms process that wasongoing at the time, trying to get an
understanding of how people felt aboutthat reforms process and what they thought
were the topics were the the governmentof the time needed to put more effort.
So it's a very quick way.
It's not going to give youthe full answer though.
(34:15):
You're just going to get a quantitativeanswer on what's on social media.
And we all know that on socialmedia, we find two things.
We find lots and lots of content,which is extremely polarized
and increasingly more so.
But it's a point where you can start.
It's also a very good tool.
I think these information andcommunication technologies are
(34:35):
great tools to communicate progresswhen it is reasonable to do so.
And we know that it's not alwaysreasonable to do so and not advisable,
but uh, Here we also have tonegotiate with our own processes.
How much can we disclose and how muchcan we not communicate to the public when
they're expecting us to make progress?
And in there negotiators and mediatorsand mediation experts could tell
(34:58):
you, well, here we can releasea little piece of information.
We can share some pictures.
But at least establishing that bridgebetween the people who are meant to
benefit from the mediation processand those who are spearhead in it.
And at the same time, thirdly isabout collecting impressions and
collecting knowledge from people andincluding them into that conversation.
(35:21):
I've seen that done in Colombia, forexample, with a project that was
called , the largest conversation onEarth, where it was a fantastic website
where people were asked questions thatwere fundamental to the peace process,
and they were meant to contribute theirideas not through a voting system as such,
but a system of pros and cons of everyproposal and then developing on those.
(35:45):
But it was a great way forpeople to feel involved.
But it, it can also go out of handand where do you set the limits?
But I would say then collectinga quick image of what's going on.
Communicate in progress and thengetting feedback from the different
constituencies are at least three waysin which information and communication
(36:06):
technologies can be helpful.
Laura May (36:08):
In commercial mediation world, there's increasing interest
in online dispute resolution, so theprocess is actually going online and
also in the use of AI and machinelearning to actually facilitate.
Do you think that these are technologiesthat we would ever see in peace media?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (36:25):
Yeah, I'm, I'm sure there are people
who have been working on this.
I could think of, Andrea probably haslooked into this Martin Wesh as well.
I have to say, I'm a bit of an agnosticwhen it comes to artificial intelligence.
As a professor.
I struggle with artificial intelligencenow every day because our students
use it to , produce their papers,and it's incredibly powerful.
(36:48):
But I think if we understand thatmediation and dialogue are profoundly
human processes that need that one-to-one,and it's one of the things that we've
struggled with in the last two yearswith the whole pandemic and virtual
facilitation and virtual sessions.
I wonder how can artificial intelligencehelp us maintain or re strengthen
(37:12):
that human aspect of the mediationprocess and the dialogue process.
And I'm still not sure.
I, I don't know how they could do it.
Laura May (37:21):
Yeah, I, I'm in the same boat.
I, I mean, I've done sometraining with a I as well.
And yeah, I'm very, I'm very deeplycynical, even if it's using in commercial
mediation, because there's this sayingthat garbage in, garbage out, right?
And so AI is trained on all of this data,and if there's biases or problems in
the data, then it's actually replicatedin the solutions that AI suggests.
(37:43):
It's like with chat G p T, you know, sopeople have started putting all these
cynical articles up about going, oh,here's all this garbage that it spa out.
It was very authoritative in tone,but it means absolutely nonsense.
And so I, I am concerned thatwe'll see that kind of thing
actually in mediation itself.
But it sounds like you're not too alarmedabout it for peace mediation at least
just yet because of the, perhaps profound.
(38:05):
human component.
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (38:08):
Yeah, well, there's a fundamental truth in artificial
intelligence, and that's that the morewe use it, the better it will get.
And I've seen it, for example, I hada colleague whose name is Juan, who
worked on training models to detectships on the sea or to detect anything.
And I think when the content of what youare working on is very static, or at a
(38:30):
minimum it is very identifiable, thenI'm sure artificial intelligence can be
trained perfectly well to identify thoseitems . But if we understand that conflict
is so, it's based on perception and thatthose perceptions change constantly and
that those perceptions depend on a series.
(38:51):
Basic needs that we all have, but notonly basic needs, but psychological
needs and emotional needs that areconstantly going to be changing.
I just think artificial intelligence isprobably going to be playing catch up
all the time to try and get to a pointwhere they can understand conflict.
We don't understand conflict, atall, and so we're just trying to
(39:12):
deal with it as best as we can.
But one thing that they probably can dois work on making communications more
sensitive or making communications moreattuned to some of the principles that we
have in non-violent communications, forinstance, or to comply, let's say with
un principles for mediation processes,this kind of thing they can probably help
(39:35):
us with and they can make that processquicker or at least easier for everyone.
Right.
And I'm just thinking out loud here, but.
Potential project could be trying to get.
And I think I've seen something like this,trying to get a artificial intelligence
to reinterpret a piece of communicationand to transform it into non-violent
communication or into non-biasedcommunication, that type of thing.
(39:59):
We can look that up cause I'msure there is something like that.
Laura May (40:03):
I feel like I could use that
you know, Miguel, thank youso much for joining me today.
And for those who are interestedin learning more about your
work, where can they find you?
Miguel Varela Rodriguez (40:13):
Look, look, thank you so much for having me.
That was fun.
I think LinkedIn is probablythe best, , best place.
do have a website, but I keepchanging the domain all the time
because I'm always very you knowinsecure as to what it should be.
But they can find me on LinkedInby, using my whole name and hopefully
I'll be the first to pop up.
(40:33):
But if there's someone else, thenmaybe they are interested as well.
Laura May (40:37):
I like this.
Brilliant.
Well look, thanks again forjoining me and for everyone else.
Until next time.
This is Laura May with a conflictchipping podcast from mediate.com.
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