Nathali Basten

(In)Visibility of Death: Neda - Constructions of Gender and Identity in the Media Nathali Basten

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Communications - Journalism, Journalism Professions, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), language: English, abstract: The protests after Iran's Presidential Elections in June 2009 have cost the lives of an unknown number of political opponents, protesting against the regime of former and future president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the revolutionary and militia forces. Yet one particular death seemed to be particularly horrifying; the video of a young woman being shot was circulating on the internet and soon extensively reported on by the mass media. In the course of events after Neda Agha-Soltan's death, a struggle developed over her status as icon and symbol for the Green Movement, as opposition leader Mousavi's followers were called. On the one hand, the regime in Tehran fought hard to diminish the effect which arose from this video while on the other hand Western media, politicians and artists picked up the story and reproduced it - each with their own agenda in mind. The object of this work is the discursive event of Neda´s death; subsequent to this, the question how Neda's identity is constructed and why her death became visible while bearing in mind the Western hegemonic discourse which is intersected with discourses on media, gender, politics and ethnicity.