Grandjean, J., & Gring, M.A. (forthcoming). The Christian aesthetics of trauma. Visual Communication Quarterly.
Grandjean, J. (forthcoming). The Sublime in U.S. National Parks. Edited volume of the 2024 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture.
Grandjean, J. (2025). Karnan: Internal colonialism as a symptom of mimicry. Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, 13(1), https://doi.org/10.5744/jgps.2025.2457.
Mari Selvaraj’s Karnan represents internal colonialism—defined as regional disparities in socioeconomic development—as an element of mimicry. The fictional movie narrates the feud between two villages in Tamil Nādu and illustrates how mimicry of the British rule in the Subcontinent reinforces socioeconomic disparities, exemplified by the lack of a bus stop in one of the two villages. First, the fictional movie is put back into its historical and real-life context of caste violence in Tamil Nādu. Second, the concept of mimicry is explained through Bhabha’s writings and legacy in postcolonial studies in the context of India and its caste system through the lens of Karnan. Then, the concept of internal colonialism is explored through the lack of mobility that Karnan and his fellow villagers experience in the movie. Finally, internal colonialism is integrated into Bhabha’s conceptualization of mimicry in postcolonial studies.
Grandjean, J., Bucy, E. P. (2024). Visual depictions of the Rohingya crisis: Exodus, cultural othering, genocidal aggression—and audience fatigue. Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10(2), pp. 127-149, https://doi.org/10.1386/jvpc_00028_1.
The Rohingya people of Myanmar (formerly Burma) have been described by the UN as the ‘most persecuted ethnic group in the world’. Yet despite recognition of the Rohingya’s attempted eradication as a genocide, this humanitarian crisis is rarely the subject of intensive news coverage and largely flies under the radar of international media. When the Rohingya’s plight does appear in the news, media coverage tends to portray this religious and ethnic minority as a displaced people fleeing their native Myanmar rather than depicting the reality of genocide and the gruesome visual truth of systematic, violent elimination. To document how an ongoing genocide is visually framed in news and understood by audiences, this article develops an inventory of visual frames used in coverage about the crisis, then employs a ‘picture prompt’ method of soliciting responses from viewers to document how these frames are received and interpreted. Analysis of 2132 responses from 533 online participants reveals stark differences in viewer evaluations of more graphic portrayals compared to mundane depictions of the crisis. The study summarizes the consequences that viewer interpretations of images of conflict and mass displacement can have for humanitarian support and perceptions of event severity.
Grandjean, J. (2023). The spectacle of flags: The Russian and American flags as global spectacles of national identities. Visual Communication Quarterly, 30(1), 33-43, https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2022.2160981.
This article explores through perspectives of rhetorical criticism the stories of two rivals planting their national flags in unexplored territories. Whereas the American flag on the Moon proved American technological superiority over the U.S.S.R.’s, the Russian flag in the Arctic can be seen as a political move by President Putin to recreate the lost grandeur of the Soviet Union and reenact the Cold War to revive his political support at home. By doing so and recording their exploits, the two actors created national narratives that go beyond the simple performance of erecting a flag; these images construct an affectual nationalist identity through elites’ performance of flag planting, and mass media’s staging of these political events as a “spectacle.”
Grandjean, J., Hunter, J., & Bucy, E. P. (2021). Evaluating candidates fast and slow: Can initial impressions be socially influenced? In R. X. Browning (Ed.), Democracy and the media: The year in C-SPAN Archives research, vol. 7 (pp. 1-28). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. [lead chapter]
In the popular imagination, democracies are built upon a foundation of reasoning, deliberation, and citizens working together to evaluate the best possible candidates to lead them. This notion, while comforting, is not necessarily based in fact. Rather, people’s voting decisions reflect a variety of factors, many unrelated to the enlightened reasoning the supposed ideal citizen is assumed to employ (Lodge et al., 1989). Sometimes, decisions may not be deliberate or even conscious but reactionary and automatic, reflecting voters’ assessment of nonverbal cues. Indeed, the ability to read expressive displays develops in the early stages of life (Antonakis & Dalgas, 2009). Although people often don’t trust their own ability to make snap judgments about political candidates, reliable inferences about leadership traits and election winners can nevertheless be made on the basis of thin-slice exposures to political images lasting a few seconds or less (see Benjamin & Shapiro, 2009; Olivola & Todorov, 2010; Todorov et al., 2005). While experimental research has convincingly demonstrated how quickly viewers are able to arrive at accurate assessments of political candidates on their own, this project seeks to slow down and socially assess the judgments behind these outcomes. We are also interested in the extent to which people change their initial voting decision after a group discussion. Similar to the thin-slice experimental paradigm, this study asks viewers to rate still images and short video clips of political candidates using footage from the C-SPAN Video Library. But rather than stopping there, we employ online focus groups to elicit discussion about the factors that influence viewer judgments—and whether the social context of discussing political evaluations with others causes some participants to change their mind after the fact—and why. Our approach thus complements and extends previous studies in which participants were only able to offer a one-time candidate assessment based on a short exposure.
Grandjean, J. (2017), The media coverage of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and its impact on the conflict. The Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies.
In the 21st century, wars are not just about guns and artillery anymore because there is another kind of war that is a lot more insidious than the traditional one: the war of information. When a war is raging in an “important” part of the world (that is, one in which Western nations have interests), another war is raging, in the media. The 2008 Russo-Georgian war is a brilliant example of this, where Georgia fought for the support of the international community while Russia tried to stop it. Both countries used their best weapon: communication. It is then interesting to analyze the way this war was covered by the international media, to see how this new type of warfare had an impact on public opinion and foreign policy regarding both Russia and Georgia. Further, it is important to highlight not only the importance of this war in the context of international relations and the impact it had on Georgia, but also the impact on Russia and on the West, especially when it comes to NATO’s expansion and the unity of the European Union.