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Building on the vast research conducted on war and media since the 1970s, scholars are now studying the digital transformation of the production of news. Little scholarly attention has been paid, however, to non-professional, eyewitness visuals, even though this genre holds a still greater bearing on the way conflicts are fought, communicated, and covered by the news media. This volume examines the power of new technologies for creating and disseminating images in relation to conflicts. Mortensen presents a theoretical framework and uses case studies to investigate the impact of non-professional images with regard to essential issues in today's media landscape: including new media technologies and democratic change, the political mobilization and censorship of images, the ethics of spectatorship, and the shifting role of the mainstream news media in the digital age.
List of contents
Introduction: Eyewitness Images and Mediatized Conflict 1. The Eyewitness in the Media 2. Eyewitness Images as a Genre, Genres of Eyewitness Images 3. Mediatized Conflict 4. Counter-Images: Visual Censorship and the Challenges of Digital Media – the Snapshot of US Soldiers (2004) and the Bootleg Tape of Saddam Hussein’s Hanging (2006) 5. The Unintentional News Icon: The Canonization and Political Mobilization of the Footage of Neda Agha Soltan in the Post-Election Revolt Iran (2009) 6. Metacoverage and Mediatized Conflict: WikiLeaks’ Release of ‘Collateral Murder’ (2010) and the Transformation of the Information Flow 7. Citizen Investigation and Eyewitness Images: The Boston Marathon Bombing (2013) Conclusion
About the author
Mette Mortensen is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Summary
This volume examines the power of new technologies for creating and disseminating images in relation to conflicts. Mortensen presents a theoretical framework and uses case studies to investigate the impact of non-professional images with regard to essential issues in today’s media landscape.
