This essay is about images of the enemy. But a particular enemy and a peculiar motif of representation: the woman homegrown terrorist and the before-and-after image as they appear in US online and broadcast news. The case of Shannon Conley, a young white American who attempted to join Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014, is used to examine these against an already-gendered orientalist discourse about women and terrorism. The before-and-after motif includes the composite image as well as its disaggregation into juxtapositions and sequences, some of which use surrogate images. I utilize the ‘voice of the visual’ against the temporality of preemption to parse out how the before-and-after image ‘speaks security’. In the context of a paradigm centered on anticipating threats, I argue the motif invites viewers to re-examine the ‘before’ image and ask what they might spot in it to help forestall such a transformation, next time.
AaronsonT (2013) The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing.
2.
AliF (2006) Rocking the cradle to rocking the world: The role of Muslim female fighters. Journal of International Women’s Studies8(1): 21–35.
3.
AlsultanyE (2012) Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11. New York: New York University Press.
4.
Andén-PapadopolousK (2008) The Abu Ghraib torture photographs: News frames, visual culture, and the power of images. Journalism9(1): 5–30.
5.
AradauCvan MunsterR (2012) The time/space of preparedness: Anticipating the ‘next terrorist attack’. Space and Culture15(2): 98–109.
6.
AuerMSutcliffeJLeeM (2018) Framing the ‘White Widow’: Using intersectionality to uncover complex representations of female terrorism in news media. Media, War & Conflict12(3): 281–298.
7.
BarthesR (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang.
ChouliarakiL (2013) The humanity of war: Iconic photojournalism of the battlefield, 1914-2012. Visual Communication12(3): 315–340.
16.
ChuangARoemerRC (2013) The immigrant Muslim American at the boundary of insider and outsider: Representations of Faisal Shahzad as ‘homegrown’ terrorist. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly90(1): 89–107.
17.
CloudDL (2004) ‘To veil the threat of terror’: Afghan women and the 〈clash of civilizations〉 in the imagery of the U.S. war on terrorism. Quarterly Journal of Speech90(3): 286–306.
GriffinM (2004) Picturing America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ in Afghanistan and Iraq: Photographic motifs as news frames. Journalism5(4): 381–402.
30.
GriffinM (2010) Media images of war. Media, War & Conflict3(1): 7–41.
31.
GrusinR (2010) Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
32.
HallinD (1984) The media, the war in Vietnam, and political support: A critique of the thesis of an oppositional media. The Journal of Politics46(1): 2–24.
33.
HansenL (2011) Theorizing the image for security studies: Visual security and the Muhammad cartoon crisis. European Journal of International Relations17(1): 51–74.
34.
HayesDGuardinoM (2010) Whose views made the news? Media coverage and the march to war in Iraq. Political Communication27(1): 59–87.
HeckASchlagG (2013) Securitizing images: The female body and the war in Afghanistan. European Journal of International Relations19(4): 891–913.
37.
HellerD (2006) Before: ‘Things just keep getting better . . .’. In: HellerD (ed.) The Great American Makeover: Television, History, Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43–64.
38.
JonesPJWardleC (2008) ‘No emotion, no sympathy’: The visual construction of Maxine Carr. Crime, Media, Culture4(1): 53–71.
39.
KeithSSchwalbeCBSilcockBW (2010) Comparing war images across media platforms: Methodological challenges for content analysis. Media, War & Conflict3(1): 87–98.
40.
KellnerD (2005) Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy: Terrorism, War and Election Battles. New York: Routledge.
41.
KumarD (2004) War propaganda and the (ab)uses of women: Media constructions of the Jessica Lynch story. Feminist Media Studies4(3): 297–313.
42.
LucaitesJLHarimanR (2001) Visual rhetoric, photojournalism, and democratic public culture. Rhetoric Review20(1/2): 37–42.
43.
LukinAButtDMatthiessenC (2004) Reporting war grammar as ‘covert operation’. Pacific Journalism Review10(1): 58–74.
44.
MassumiB (2015) Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
45.
McKennaSS (2006) The final frontier: News media’s use of commercial satellite imagery during wartime. Master’s Thesis, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, AL.
MitchellWJT (2011) Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
48.
MooreA (2015) Monuments men and martyred towns: The Arras Belfry by Fernand Sabatté. The Journal of Military History79: 1047–1057.
49.
NacosBL (2005) The portrayal of female terrorists in the media: Similar framing patterns in the news coverage of women in politics and in terrorism. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism28(5): 435–451.
PoppRKMendelsonAL (2010) ‘X’-ing out enemies: Time magazine, visual discourse, and the war in Iraq. Journalism11(2): 203–221.
58.
PuarJ (2007) Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
59.
RajanVGJ (2011) Women Suicide Bombers: Narratives of Violence. London: Routledge.
60.
ReevesJ (2017) Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society. New York: New York University Press.
61.
SchwalbeCBSilcockBWKeithS (2008) Visual framing of the early weeks of the U.S.-led Invasion of Iraq: Applying the master war narrative to electronic and print images. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media52(3): 448–465.
62.
ScottJW (2007) The Politics of the Veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
63.
SenderK (2012) The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences. New York: New York University Press.
64.
ShoverMJ (1975) Roles and images of women in World War I propaganda. Politics & Society5(4): 469–486.
65.
SimpsonC (2001) Press access to satellite images is a casualty in this war: The Department of Defense owns and controls these pictures. Neiman Reports2001: 31–34.
66.
SontagS (2004) Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador.
67.
SpillmanKRSpillmanK (1997) Some sociobiological and psychological aspects of ‘images of the enemy’. In: Fiebig-von HaseRLehmkhulU (eds) Enemy Images in American History. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 43–64.
68.
StabileCAKumarD (2005) Unveiling imperialism: Media, gender and the war on Afghanistan. Media, Culture & Society27(5): 765–782.
69.
Stack-O’ConnorA (2007) Picked last: Women and terrorism. Joint Forces Quarterly44(1): 95–101.
70.
SteuterEMillsD (2010) ‘The vermin have struck again’: Dehumanizing the enemy in post 9/11 media representations. Media, War & Conflict3(2): 152–167.
71.
SzpunarPM (2018) Homegrown: Identity and Difference in the American War on Terror. New York: New York University Press.
72.
Tenenboim-WeinblattK (2008) Fighting for the story’s life: Non-closure in journalistic narrative. Journalism9(1): 31–51.
UrginaL (2014) Celebrity biometrics: Norms, new materialism and the agentic body in cosmetic surgery photography. Fashion Theory18(1): 27–44.
75.
VolppL (2002) The citizen and the terrorist. Immigration and Nationality Law Review23: 561–586.
76.
WeberC (2017) ‘The terrorist’: The out-of-place and on-the-move ‘perverse homosexual’ in international relations. Critical Studies in Terrorism10(2): 240–252.
