A Timely Prophet? The Doomsday Clock as a Visualization of Securitization Moves with a Global Referent Object

Abstract

There have been numerous calls to include images in the analysis of securitization and the social construction of security issues. The present article answers these calls by examining a longstanding process of securitization in which speech acts have been interwoven with a powerful symbol. Looking into the past and a visualization of possible futures, the article traces the resets of the so-called Doomsday Clock of the Atomic Scientists as securitization/desecuritization moves with a global referent object. While the Scientists’ securitization arguments have pleaded to rationality, the symbol of the Clock has worked to evoke people’s sensibilities. The article reasons that while images and symbols can facilitate, or impede, securitization moves, it is difficult to fathom how images, without anchorage, could bring about securitization that would not have been institutionalized previously.