Re-imagining Crisis Reporting : Professional ideology of journalists and citizen eyewitness images

This study, based on interviews with journalists representing major news organizations in Finland and Sweden, explores how the professional ideology of journalists is shaped by the international trend of citizen witnessing. Citizen-created photographs and videos that have become a routine feature of mainstream news coverage are approached as a potential force of change that transforms professional imaginaries of journalism vis-a-vis crisis events. From journalists’ lines of thought three interpretative repertoires were identified: resistance, resignation and renewal. Our results hint at a rethinking of the professional norms and roles of journalists.Peer reviewe

“Citizen Journalism” in the Syrian Uprising: Problematizing Western Narratives in a Local Context

This article analyzes the term ‘citizen journalism’ against the backdrop of the Arab uprisings in order to show how it overlooks the local context of digital media practices. The first part examines videos emanating from Syria to illustrate how they blur the lines between acts of witnessing, reporting, and lobbying, as well as between professional and amateur productions, and civic and violent intentions. The second part highlights the genealogies of citizenship and journalism in an Arab context and cautions against assumptions about their universality. The article argues that the oscillation of Western narratives between hopes about digital media's role in democratization in the Arab World and fears about their use in terrorism circumscribe the theorization of digital media practices

Activism and radical politics in the digital age: Towards a typology

This article aims to develop a typology for evaluating different types of activism in the digital age, based on the ideal of radical democracy. Departing from this ideal, activism is approached in terms of processes of identification by establishing conflictual frontiers to outside Others as either adversaries or enemies. On the basis of these discussions, we outline a typology of four kinds of activists: the salon activist, the contentious activist, the law-abiding activist, and the Gandhian activist. The typology’s first axis, between antagonism and agonism, is derived from normative discussions in radical democracy concerning developing frontiers. The second axis, about readiness to engage in civil disobedience, is derived from a review of studies of different forms of online activism. The article concludes by suggesting that the different forms of political engagement online have to be taken into account when studying how online activism can contribute to social change

Awards, Archives, and Affects: Tropes in the World Press Photo Contest 2009 - 2011

__Abstract__ Photography contests have assumed an increasingly significant public role in the context of the global surge of mass-mediated war reporting. This study focuses on the recurrence of visual tropes in press photographs awarded in the annual contest World Press Photo (WPP) in the years 2009–11. By tropes, we mean conventions (e.g. a mourning woman, a civilian facing soldiers, a distressed witness to an atrocity) that remain unchanged despite their travels across the visual sphere, gaining professional and public recognition and having a strong affective impact. We contend that photography contests such as the WPP influence and organize a process of generic understanding of war, disaster and atrocity that is based on a number of persistent tropes, such as the mourner, the protester or the survivor amidst chaos and ruins. We further show that these tropes are gendered along traditional conceptions of femininity and masculinity, appealing strongly to both judges and wider audiences. The evidence for our claim comes from an analysis of the photographs that won awards, observation of the judging sessions, semi-structured interviews with three jury chairmen, and public commentary on the juries’ choices (blogs, newspapers and websites)

"Come on, let us shoot!": WikiLeaks and the cultures of militarization

This paper explores the controversy generated by the nonprofit WikiLeaks website’s posting of a video documenting the shooting of a group of civilians by U.S. forces situated in a helicopter gunship hovering over a Baghdad neighbourhood. Sparking press attention around the world, the brutal rawness of the black and white footage—compounded by the harrowing exchanges between the air crew recorded on the audio track—proved acutely unsettling to viewers otherwise habituated to routine (effectively sanitized) renderings of the horrors of a warzone. This paper considers the video as an instance where the cultural normalization of militarization was disrupted in ideological terms, thereby threatening to unravel officially-sanctioned relations of communicative power

“Come on, let us shoot!”: WikiLeaks and the Cultures of Militarization

This paper explores the controversy generated by the nonprofit WikiLeaks website’s posting of a video documenting the shooting of a group of civilians by U.S. forces situated in a helicopter gunship hovering over a Baghdad neighbourhood. Sparking press attention around the world, the brutal rawness of the black and white footage—compounded by the harrowing exchanges between the air crew recorded on the audio track—proved acutely unsettling to viewers otherwise habituated to routine (effectively sanitized) renderings of the horrors of a warzone. This paper considers the video as an instance where the cultural normalization of militarization was disrupted in ideological terms, thereby threatening to unravel officially-sanctioned relations of communicative power