Re-imagining human rights photography: Ariella Azoulays intervention

Gormley and Allan focus on several pertinent theoretical contributions made by Ariella Azoulay that invite a radical rethinking of familiar assumptions regarding human rights photography. Having established a conceptual basis, they proceed to analyse several examples of photojournalists attempting to ‘activate’ viewers by inviting them to co-create photographic narratives via methods of hypertext and online archival interaction, and of International Non Governmental Organisations (INGOs) working to create projects which ‘speak’ to viewers by involving the children they seek to represent in the production of photography. It is argued that in taking up Azoulay’s call to rethink public relationships to human rights imagery, these projects represent progressive steps towards addressing the multifarious inequalities at stake. At the same time, however, realising this potential depends on making good the promise of rendering visible the normative ideals of human rights

The strategic ritual of emotionality: A case study of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles

Taking as its vantage point Gaye Tuchman’s (1972) notion of the strategic ritual of objectivity, this article argues that there is also a strategic ritual of emotionality in journalism – an institutionalized and systematic practice of journalists infusing their reporting with emotion. To examine the strategic ritual of emotionality, the article considers Pulitzer Prize-winning articles between 1995 and 2011, taking the prize as a marker of cultural capital in the journalistic field. A coding scheme for a basic content analysis was developed on the basis of scholarly insights into journalistic narratives, as well as discourse analytic approaches associated with appraisal theory. The analysis indicates that the analyzed stories rely heavily on emotional story-telling. The strategic ritual of emotionality manifests itself in the overwhelming use of anecdotal leads, personalized story-telling and expressions of affect. Journalists ‘outsource’ emotional labor by describing the emotions of others, and drawing on sources to discuss their emotions