Visual PeaceTech : Digital Visual Images as Security-Building Tools
Glybchenko, Yelyzaveta (2025)
Tampere University
2025
Hallintotieteiden, kauppatieteiden ja politiikan tutkimuksen tohtoriohjelma - Doctoral Programme in Administrative Sciences, Business Studies and Politics
Johtamisen ja talouden tiedekunta - Faculty of Management and Business
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Väitöspäivä
2025-05-21
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-3902-9
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-3902-9
Tiivistelmä
This research project investigates the ways in which intersections of off-digital technological innovation and artistic innovation can strategically support the design and implementation of sustaining quality peace. The research project develops the theoretical framework of sustaining quality peace in the context of Ukraine and its ten-year-long defense against Russian terrorism (2014-2024). Employing an autoethnographic approach to researching International Relations, this dissertation investigates the conceptual and practical potential of employing digital visual images as visual peace technology to enhance security as part of sustaining quality peace efforts.
This research project asks the following research question: “What is the conceptual and practical potential of employing digital visual images to enhance security as part of peace efforts?”. The potential of employing digital visual images to enhance security as part of peace efforts is explored through the following sub-questions:
1) Can, and if so how, digital visual images be understood as part of peacetech? What are digital visual images and what do they do in relation to security – in digital spaces, virtual reality, augmented reality, and lived experiences?
2) Would, and if so how, peace processes be enhanced if the images employed as peace technology were created by those actors, whose experiences are regularly invisibilized by elitist artistic image-creation or visualized top-down?
3) What are the risks and limitations of employing digital visual images as security- building tools - employing them as visual peace technology?
4) How would digital and relevant knowledge spaces need to be designed for visual peacetech to be effectively employed?
Following the article-based format, this research project conceptualizes the notion of visual peace technology by examining four relevant areas of theory and practice. The conceptualization process starts from examining digital visuality of images and image transformation strategies for supporting those actors who already work for security and peace but whose efforts may be made invisible by the prevailing power relations. The development of visual peacetech continues through the investigation of virtual reality technologies as peace technologies, focusing on some of the VR initiatives designed for and applied to supporting Ukraine. Then, the dissertation explores augmented reality technologies as tools for futures design of sustaining quality peace arrangements in Ukraine during Russia’s 2022-2024 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To conclude the conceptualization of visual peacetech, this research project investigates the systems within which visual peacetech may be further veloped and employed: peace research being one such system, and Internet governance being the other one.
To conceptualize visual peacetech, this research project employs the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry and adapts the 5-D cycle of Appreciative Inquiry to visual peacetech. The 5-D stages of Appreciative Inquiry – definition, discovery, dream, design and destiny – serve as lenses for discussing the findings of this research and operationalizing them in practitioner peacebuilding efforts. Lessons from and reflections on the author’s own peacebuilding practice and peace research journey, forming the autoethnographic approach to researching International Relations in this project, also inform conceptualization of visual peace technology.
In this research, visual peacetech has been conceptualized as a peacebuilding methodology that is characterized by holistic more-than-human futures design which pays attention to entrepreneurial companionship between guerrilla peacebuilders and (off-)digital technologies to context-specifically adapt/co-(re)design software/hardware and its use cases for the purposes of building peace in its own right. Building peace in its own right - sustaining quality peacebuilding – refers to supporting those people and things that already work for peace, which, given the Ph.D.’s focus, has predominantly meant Ukrainians and Ukrainian initiatives of defense and peacebuilding.
This research project asks the following research question: “What is the conceptual and practical potential of employing digital visual images to enhance security as part of peace efforts?”. The potential of employing digital visual images to enhance security as part of peace efforts is explored through the following sub-questions:
1) Can, and if so how, digital visual images be understood as part of peacetech? What are digital visual images and what do they do in relation to security – in digital spaces, virtual reality, augmented reality, and lived experiences?
2) Would, and if so how, peace processes be enhanced if the images employed as peace technology were created by those actors, whose experiences are regularly invisibilized by elitist artistic image-creation or visualized top-down?
3) What are the risks and limitations of employing digital visual images as security- building tools - employing them as visual peace technology?
4) How would digital and relevant knowledge spaces need to be designed for visual peacetech to be effectively employed?
Following the article-based format, this research project conceptualizes the notion of visual peace technology by examining four relevant areas of theory and practice. The conceptualization process starts from examining digital visuality of images and image transformation strategies for supporting those actors who already work for security and peace but whose efforts may be made invisible by the prevailing power relations. The development of visual peacetech continues through the investigation of virtual reality technologies as peace technologies, focusing on some of the VR initiatives designed for and applied to supporting Ukraine. Then, the dissertation explores augmented reality technologies as tools for futures design of sustaining quality peace arrangements in Ukraine during Russia’s 2022-2024 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To conclude the conceptualization of visual peacetech, this research project investigates the systems within which visual peacetech may be further veloped and employed: peace research being one such system, and Internet governance being the other one.
To conceptualize visual peacetech, this research project employs the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry and adapts the 5-D cycle of Appreciative Inquiry to visual peacetech. The 5-D stages of Appreciative Inquiry – definition, discovery, dream, design and destiny – serve as lenses for discussing the findings of this research and operationalizing them in practitioner peacebuilding efforts. Lessons from and reflections on the author’s own peacebuilding practice and peace research journey, forming the autoethnographic approach to researching International Relations in this project, also inform conceptualization of visual peace technology.
In this research, visual peacetech has been conceptualized as a peacebuilding methodology that is characterized by holistic more-than-human futures design which pays attention to entrepreneurial companionship between guerrilla peacebuilders and (off-)digital technologies to context-specifically adapt/co-(re)design software/hardware and its use cases for the purposes of building peace in its own right. Building peace in its own right - sustaining quality peacebuilding – refers to supporting those people and things that already work for peace, which, given the Ph.D.’s focus, has predominantly meant Ukrainians and Ukrainian initiatives of defense and peacebuilding.
Kokoelmat
- Väitöskirjat [5013]