Abstract
This chapter describes how visuals collected through remote sensing technologies, such as satellites or cell phones, play an increasingly important role in human rights investigations. The author provides several case studies, showing how human rights groups use satellite images and citizen media to visually communicate a pressing human rights issue to a large audience and key decision-makers. It is the very combination of these two media that deliver the strongest cases of documentation. Both satellite and cell phone technologies allow activists to circumvent government control of information and communication flows and often provide exceptionally powerful visuals to support public advocacy. This suggests a power shift in favor of the human rights watchdog.
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Koettl, C. (2018). A Convergence of Visuals: Geospatial and Open Source Analysis in Human Rights Documentation. In: Ristovska, S., Price, M. (eds) Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75987-6_4
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