Join us for this public event to celebrate the book launch of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood.

Why is being a victim such a potent identity today? Who claims to be a victim, and why? How have such claims changed in the past century? Who benefits and who loses from the struggles over victimhood in public culture? In this timely and incisive book, Lilie Chouliaraki shows how claiming pain is about claiming power: who deserves to be protected as a victim and who should be punished as a perpetrator. She argues that even if suffering is universal, this "politics of pain" is deeply embedded within power relations and ultimately privileges the voices of the powerful over those of the powerless. Unless we come to recognize the suffering of the vulnerable for what it is—a matter not of victimhood but of injustice—Chouliaraki powerfully warns, the culture of victimhood will continue to perpetuate old exclusions and enable further injuries.

Meet our speakers and chair

Lilie Chouliaraki (@chouliaraki_l) is Professor of Media Communications at LSE. She has published extensively on the ethical and political complexities of communicating human suffering and is a leading scholar on mediated vulnerability and practices of witnessing. Her books include The Spectatorship of Suffering and The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Posthumanitarianism while her most recent work on the cultural politics of victimhood in western societies is published in Columbia University Press under the title Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood. 

Rosalind Gill is Professor of Inequalities in Creative and Cultural Industries at Goldsmiths, University of London. Gill has produced groundbreaking work on gender and media; cultural and creative work; and mediated intimacy, and made a significant contribution to debates about the ‘sexualization of culture’. Her many books include Perfect: Feeling Judged on Social Media and Confidence Culture.

Radha Sarma Hegde is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Her research and teaching focus on migration, media flows, globalization and transnational feminism. She is the author of Mediating Migration,  editor of Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational Media Cultures and co-editor of Routledge Handbook of the Indian Diaspora.

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (@KarinWahlJ) is Professor of Journalism, Media and Culture at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture, where she serves as University Dean of Research Environment and Culture. She has published 9 books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters on journalism and citizenship including, Emotions, Media and Culture.

Myria Georgiou (@MyriaGeorgiou4) is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Professor Georgiou is the author and editor of five books and more than sixty peer reviewed publications. Her work has been published in English, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Greek. She has also worked as a consultant for a number of regional and international organisations, most importantly the Council of Europe in three different projects. 

More about this event

The event will be followed by book sales of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood, as well as a book signing with the author. 

The Department of Media and Communications (@MediaLSE) is a world-leading centre for education and research in communication and media studies at the heart of LSE’s academic community in central London. The Department is ranked #1 in the UK and #3 globally in the field of media and communications (2024 QS World University Rankings).

Hashtag for this event: #LSEEvents

Podcast 

A podcast of this event is available to download from Wronged: the weaponization of victimhood.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.