*This article was published in the Trending Events periodical, issued by Future for Advanced Research & Studies - Issue 14, Sep-Oct 2015.
The media has long used photographic and video imagery to call attention to conflict zones and crises. Conflict reporting and the use of images associated with extreme conflict, death and suffering “tend to draw intense public attention, and potentially influence public opinion” whilst also revealing the impact on government and social authorities on media representations. [1] It is vital to understand how and why certain images are deemed ‘news worthy’ over other images. This leads to an understanding of the way news stories are framed to affect a viewer’s response when conflict-oriented news frames are used.
The following article aims to better understand how images are deemed moving and the impact of media representation in conflict and crises reporting. By analyzing the use of images of the current refugee crisis, the Syrian revolution and conflict, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorism, the article aims to answer questions such as: what role do visual images have in constructing a viewer’s concept of an event? How does a story gain public attention? What determines the type of media treatment that a story receives? What moves people to respond to visual images of conflict and crises?
The Refugee Crisis – Visual Images and Public Outrage:
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as war and persecution continue to increase in the Middle East, North Africa and Western Asia, the world is witnessing the largest refugee crisis since World War II.[2] The majority of the refugees are from Syria, whereby more than four million Syrian refugees are currently seeking asylum and another seven million are internally displaced. Most of the Syrian refugees are youth, whereby 51% are under the age 18, and 39% are under the age 11.[3] Despite these staggering figures, and as is often the case, the story of the plight of refugees is often sidelined for more sensationalist media coverage of terrorist attacks or war reporting.
The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria and the refugee crisis that followed attracted minimal coverage. The story that brought Western media attention to the plight of refugees was three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who died in the Aegean Sea and his lifeless body washed up on Turkish shores. Aylan was not the first child to drown from the arduous journey to cross the Mediterranean in order to seek asylum in Europe. However, the photo of Aylan’s small figure went viral across print and social media platforms and has rendered the plight of refugees impossible to ignore. The consequences of Aylan’s death, along with the thousands of refugees that lost their lives, raise multiple questions. Firstly, what role do visual images have in formulating the viewer’s conception of ‘a refugee’? Secondly, how do refugees gain public attention and why does the media cover some instances of the plight of asylum seekers whilst others are ignored?
According to Professor Terence Wright at the University of Ulster, there are two main factors contributing to the prospects of effective media coverage of a refugee crisis.[4] The first factor, Wright states “in order to attract Western press coverage it is necessary for the crisis to be of such a magnitude that it cannot be ignored; or else it is necessary for it to be perceived as having some obvious connection with Western concerns.”[5] According to the UNHCR, over 300,000 refugees have attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea to seek asylum, of which 2500 have died.[6] Despite the digital media and global communications revolution that we are witnessing, the media coverage of the current refugee crisis rarely reached a dramatic capstone up until the image of Aylan sent shockwaves across the globe.
This was mainly due to the increasing number of refugees crossing European borders to seek asylum. Photographs of Aylan were a rallying call, by members of the public to take action. Only when Aylan’s dramatic death was televised and spread across social media, did European Governments respond. This is despite the various attitudes and divisions by governments, such as Hungary and Germany, towards how to address and affect policy change towards the asylum seekers.[7]
The second factor of effective media coverage of refugee crisis revolves around the notion that a “story will gain airtime if the nature of the crisis is such that it produces dramatic imagery – pictures with impact”.[8]The image of Aylan became an ‘iconography of predicament’, whereby the image provides “an essential visual resource that can be drawn upon when human catastrophe is to be represented” .[9] Thus, media coverage of a refugee crisis is usually seen as an encroachment and is only reported on when a climax or ‘news worthy’ story is prevalent and is impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, this selective nature of media representation tends to objectify and typecast refugees, ignoring the imploring political and historical issues that created such a staggering humanitarian crisis and the delayed or extremely adverse responses by governments to such crises.
Media Images of War – A Social Construction of Syria’s Reality:
Media has played a role in creating iconic images that promulgate various reactions to times of conflict. Media portrayals of conflict most likely entail propagandistic pictures from the front lines such as the ‘Flag Raising at Iwo Jima’; or images that reveal a shifting complexity of war that reveals a contradicting story, such as ‘Accidental Napalm’ in the Vietnam War, whereby the latter became another icon of outrage and predicament. [10] Continuing with the iconography of images, it is important to analyze how the media portrays the ongoing Syrian Civil War and how media plays a role in the social context of constructing pictorial meaning to a conflict.
Images are used by the media to construct some meaning on political, social and economic issues. Ideally, media representation of conflict ought to provide the audience with coherent information on broader social forces that effect not only the lives of the audience, but those affected by conflict, or what is often deemed as ‘the other’. The current transnational communications world, where conflict is rife in various regions, opens up a varied number of challenges to the media landscape. Challenges include social movements that “offer competing constructions of reality” that may lead an audience to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media-generated images of the world.[11]
According to writer, professor and producer, David Campbell, “images do bring a particular kind of power to the portrayal of death and violence” whereby “narratives that are un-illustrated can struggle to convey the horror evident in circumstances”.[12] Despite the importance of imagery, the Syrian Civil War has received limited media attention. Only when dramatic or pivotal moments occurred in the conflict, did the media take note, examples include the chemical attacks on Ghouta in 2013 and the recent Russian bombing of civilian areas in Homs. As a result of the lack of media attention, the Syrian Civil War has largely depended on the use of social media and the uploading of images and videos of the atrocities being committed against the Syrian civilian population by the Assad regime and allies.
Following the Ghouta chemical weapons attack, images and videos of hundreds of bodies of men, women and children strewn across hospital floors went viral across social media platforms. Despite the death toll in Syria now well over 320,000 and the hours upon hours of videos and thousands of images uploaded on social media platforms in the past four years, there is limited notable international action by governments. This leads to the connection between the use of iconographic imagery in the media and action by the audience and governments. According to Campbell, the relationship between imagery and action “is not strictly causal”[13] due to the media’s reliance on “metaphoric and metonymic images which obscure the full nature and extent of horror” within a conflict.[14]
Similar to reporting in the Vietnam War, the media continues to “observe and discuss atrocities blandly” in order to enhance the propaganda models used in conflict reporting.[15] The media has failed to report on the atrocities happening in Syria, which are often curtailed by media conglomerates and government run media channels, in what is often seen, by the Syrian population, as a deafening silence or a complete focus on ISIS.[16] This notion is exasperated by the bombing of civilian areas by Russian jets in war torn Syria.
Whilst various world leaders condemned the bombings by Russia, the general media portrayal is that of a political propaganda machine dictating how the sole focus of the US led coalition is to fight ISIS, whilst sidetracking the stepping down of Assad.[17] This sees a transformation of the political conversation, dictating that Assad needs to remain in power whilst pacifying a damaged population. This highlights how an audience can perceive war based on dependence on the relationship between the news media and governments resulting in public outrage or pacification. Viewing iconographic images of war zones then result in “a continuing practice of cultural production that is also a tool of government management, media business and political persuasion."[18]
Atrocious Images - Visibility of ISIS and the War on Terror:
According to Friis, “the technological innovations of the digital age have influenced not just how war can be shown, but also who can successfully produce, choose and disseminate images of war to a larger audience”.[19] ISIS has succeeded in disseminating the violence of war visible to a wider audience, through social media platforms and their various websites. The most prominent case study of ISIS atrocities are the beheading videos.
Whilst beheadings are not a new phenomenon in the form of an execution practice, ISIS beheading videos are seen as a strategic portrayal of how new media technologies can be exploited and increase visual interconnectivity.[20] Within minutes these videos spread across to social media platforms, journalists and media agents. These gruesome, yet well-designed productions, are taken down from social media platforms quickly, however, screen grabs are still disseminated through the media as an icon of the war against terror in order to draw public attention to a particular news frame. This mobilization of beheading videos by ISIS creates instant icons, whereby the images of the victims facing a brutal death “became the predominant visual icon of the war against ISIS”.[21]
Once again, however, these beheading videos do not necessarily create a causal effect on policy. What they do create is an indirect influence on the politics of warfare by establishing an environment where a mere “references to the videos can be invoked in support of particular political claims and actions”.[22] Instead of focusing on the humanitarian crisis that Syria and Iraq are currently facing, and as suggested above, these atrocious ‘icons’ have reframed the conflict to one focused on national security and counterterrorism. As a result, the visibility of iconic images creates a political implication[23] by contextualizing the image by political agents such as the media, through associative framing.[24]
Conclusion
This article has examined the impact of media representation of iconic images in times of conflict and crises. By examining the current refugee crisis, the civil war in Syria, and the fight against ISIS, the possibility of widespread visual images is endless. The use of visual imagery in contemporary media platforms highlights the importance and impact of the iconography of predicament when reporting on warfare and humanitarian crises. However, by centrally displaying images and mobilizing these visual icons across various media platforms, particular interpretations of a story are rendered by the audience. As a result, political implications are contextualized within a fragmented visual icon, often times dismissing the historical narrative that lead to the conflict and ensuing crises.
[1] Griffin, M., “Media Images of War”, Media, War & Conflict, 3(1), 2010, pp. 7-41.
[2] UNHCR News Stories, “Worldwide displacement hits all-time high as war and persecution increase”, UNHCR Website, 18 June 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html.
[3] Norton, B, “A guide to the worst refugee crisis since WWII”, Mondoweiss, 9 September 2015, http://mondoweiss.net/2015/09/refugee-crisis-since.
[4] Wright, T., “Collateral coverage: media images of Afghan refugees, 2001”, Visual Studies, 19(1), 2004, pp. 97-111.
[5] Ibid.
[6] UNHCR News Stories, “Crossings of Mediterranean Sea exceed 300,000, including 200,000 to Greece”, UNHCR Website, 28 August 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/55e06a5b6.html.
[7] Tharoor, I., “Death of drowned Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi jolts world leaders”, The Washington Post, 3 September 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/03/image-of-drowned-syrian-toddler-aylan-kurdi-jolts-world-leaders/.
[8] Wright, T., op. cit., pp. 107-108.
[9] Wright, T., “Moving images: the media representation of refugees”, Visual Studies, 17(1), 2002, pp. 53-66.
[10] Griffin, M., op. cit., pp. 7-41.
[11] Gamson, W.A., Croteau, D., Hoynes, W., & Sasson, T., “Media Images and the social construction of reality”, Annual Review of Sociology, 18, 1992, pp. 373-393.
[12] Cambell, D., “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, Journal for Cultural Research, 8(1), 2004, pp. 55-74, https://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/documents/Horrific_Blindness.pdf.
[13] Campbell, D., “Syria and the power of images”, David Campbell, 27 August 2013, https://www.david-campbell.org/2013/08/27/syria-power-images/.
[14] Cambell, D., “Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary Media”, op. cit., p.64.
[15] Herman, E. S., and Chomsky, N., Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), p. 195.
[16] Lucas, S., “The international media is failing to report the Syrian war properly”, The Conversation, 10 February 2015, http://theconversation.com/the-international-media-is-failing-to-report-the-syrian-war-properly-37290.
[17] Sky News, “Russia Condemned For Bombing Civilians In Syria”, Sky News Website, 3 October 2015, http://news.sky.com/story/1562876/russia-condemned-for-bombing-civilians-in-syria.
[18] Griffin, M., “Media Images of War”, op. cit., p. 36.
[19] Friis, S.M., “Beyond anything we have ever seen: beheading videos and the visibility of violence in the war against ISIS”, International Affairs, 91(4), 2015, pp.725-746.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ruigrok, N., van Atteveldt, W., & Takens, J. “Shifting Frames in a Deadlocked Conflict? News Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’, in Selling War: The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the “War on Terror”, edited by Seethaler, J., Karmasin, M., Melischek, G, Wȍhlert, R., pp. 259-289, Bristol: Intellect, 2013.
