Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Iconic photographs have the potential to stay in public collective memories. One such photograph of a dead 3-year-old Syrian refugee named Alan Kurdi sparked global outrage in September 2015 and became symbolic of the challenges of the Syrian civil war and its consequences. This study examines how global awareness before and after the publication of the iconic photograph affected the visual framing of the arrival of refugees into Europe. The analysis focuses on the theme of refugee photographs on CNN and Spiegel Online news sites from 1 January 2015 to 6 October 2016. The two news outlets have different audience approaches: the US-based CNN reaches out to global news consumers while Spiegel Online in Germany mainly appeals to domestic audiences. Findings reveal that after the publication of Alan Kurdi’s picture, CNN increased humanized visual framing while Spiegel Online’s visual coverage was leaning toward increased border control. The two different visual perspectives and their contribution to a polarized (domestic vs global) interpretation of migration are discussed.

Keywords

content analysis global journalism journalism studies refugee crisis visual communication

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Berglund Prytz

(2016) Refugee or migrant? What corpora can tell. Nordic Journal of English Studies 15(2): 47–61.

Bleiker

, et al. (2013) The visual dehumanization of refugees. Australian Journal of Political Science 48: 398–416.

Boghani

(2016) A staggering new death toll for Syria’s war. PBS Frontline, 17 February. Available at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-staggering-new-death-toll-for-syrias-war-470000/ (accessed 1 April 2017).

Boudana

Frosh

Cohen

(2017) Reviving icons to death: When iconic photographs become digital memes. Media, Culture & Society 39(8): 1210–1230. DOI: 10.1177/0164344347317717669900818.

Bozdagm

Smets

(2017) Understanding the images of Alan Kurdi with ‘small data’: A qualitative, comparative analysis of Tweets about Refugees in Turkey and Flanders (Belgium). International Journal of Communication 11: 4046–4069.

Brantner

Lobinger

Wetzstein

(2011) Effects of visual framing on emotional response and evaluations of news stories about the Gaza conflict 2009. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 88: 523–540.

Chouliaraki

(2010) Towards an analytics of mediation. Critical Discourse Studies 3(2): 153–178.

Chouliaraki

(2015) Afterword: The dialectics of mediation in ‘distant suffering studies’. International Communication Gazette 77(7): 708–714.

Chouliaraki

Stolic

(2017) Rethinking media responsibility in the refugee ‘crisis’: A visual typology of European news. Media, Culture & Society 39(8): 1162–1177.

10.

Chouliaraki

Zaborowski

(2017) Voice and community in the refugee crisis: A content analysis of news coverage in eight European countries. International Communication Gazette 79(6/7): 613–635.

11.

Cisneros

(2008) Contaminated communities: The metaphor of ‘immigrant as pollutant’ in media representations of immigration. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 11: 569–602.

12.

CNN (2015) Vision statement. Available at: https://cnnsoc185.wordpress.com/vision-statement/ (accessed 5 August 2015).

13.

Cohen

Boudana

Frosh

(2018) You must remember this: Iconic news photographs and collective memory. Journal of Communication 68: 453–479.

14.

Collins

(2017) Syria war: Worst man-made disaster since World War II, 15 March. Available at: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/syria-war-worst-man-disaster-world-war-ii-170315054907704.html (accessed 1 April 2017).

15.

DeSilver

(2015) Europe’s asylum seekers: Who they are, where they’re going, and their chances of staying, 30 September. Available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/30/europes-asylum-seekers-who-they-are-where-theyre-going-and-their-chances-of-staying/ (accessed 16 March 2016).

16.

Deutsche Welle (2017) More asylum requests processed in Germany than rest of EU combined, 1 March. Available at: https://www.dw.com/en/more-asylum-requests-processed-in-germany-than-rest-of-eu-combined-reports/a-36984339 (accessed 15 March 2018).

17.

Dimitrova

Ozdora-Aksak

Connolly-Ahern

(2018) On the border of the Syrian refugee crisis: Views from two different cultural perspectives. American Behavioral Scientist 62(4). DOI: 10.1177/0002764218756920.

18.

Encyclopedia Britannica (2018) Syrian Civil War, 15 January. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/Syrian-Civil-War (accessed 4 November 2018).

19.

Fahmy

(2007) They took it down: Exploring determinants of visual reporting in the toppling of the Saddam statue in national and international newspapers. Mass Communication and Society 10: 143–170.

20.

Fahmy

(2010a) Contrasting visual frames of our times: A framing analysis of English- and Arabic-language press coverage of war and terrorism. International Communication Gazette 72: 695–717.

21.

Fahmy

(2010b) Photojournalists’ and photo editors’ attitudes and perceptions: The visual coverage of 9/11 and the Afghan war. Visual Communication Quarterly 12(3/4): 146–163.

22.

Fernandez

Lirola

(2012) Lexical and visual choices in the represent-ation of immigration in the Spanish press. Spanish in Context 9: 27–57.

23.

Flippo

(2011) Der Spiegel in English: Read the news from Germany in English. Available at: http://german.about.com/od/newsnachrichten/a/englSpiegel.htm (accessed 1 November 2018).

24.

Greenwood

Jenkins

(2015) Visual framing of the Syrian conflict in news and public affairs magazines. Journalism Studies 16: 207–227.

25.

Griffin

(2010) Media images of war. Media, War & Conflict 3(1): 7–41. DOI: 10.1177/1750635210356813.

26.

Khiabany

(2016) Refugee crisis, imperialism and pitiless wars on the poor. Media, Culture & Society 38(5): 755–762.

27.

Lippmann

(1922) Public Opinion. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

28.

Mertler

Vannatta

(2005) Advanced and Multivariate Statistical Methods. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak.

29.

Messaris

Abraham

(2001) The role of image in framing news stories. In: Reese

, et al. (eds) Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 215–226.

30.

Miles

(2016) One year after Alan Kurdi photo, the moral test of a generation, 2 September. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/02/opinions/steps-helping-syrian-refugees-miles/index.html (accessed 13 November 2016).

31.

Mortensen

Allan

Peters

(2017) The iconic image in a digital age: Editorial mediations over the Alan Kurdi photographs. Nordicom Review 38: 71–86.

32.

Pantti

(2013) Seeing and not seeing the Syrian crisis: News visibility and the visual framing of the Syrian conflict in seven newspapers and their online editions. JOMEC Journal 4. DOI: 10.18573/j.2013.10259.

33.

Parry

(2011) Images of liberation: Visual framing, humanitarianism and British press photography during the 2003 Iraq invasion. Media, Culture & Society 33: 1185–1201.

34.

Perlmutter

(1998) Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crisis. Westport, CT: Praeger.

35.

Rodriguez

Dimitrova

(2011) The levels of visual framing. Journal of Visual Literacy 30(1): 48–65.

36.

Schwalbe

Dougherty

(2015) Visual coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War: Framing conflict in three U.S. news magazines. Media, War & Conflict 8: 141–162.

37.

Seo

Ebrahim

(2016) Visual propaganda on Facebook: A comparative analysis of Syrian conflicts. Media, War & Conflict 9(3): 227–251. DOI: 10.1177/1750635216661648.

38.

Sharkov

(2016) 80 percent of Germans think Merkel lost control of the refugee crisis. Newsweek. Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/80-percent-germans-think-merkel-lost-control-refugee-crisis-422945 (accessed 1 August 2018).

39.

Van Leuven

Berglez

(2016) Global journalism between dream and reality: A comparative study of The Times, Le Monde and De Standaard. Journalism Studies 17(6): 667–683.

40.

Vis

, et al. (2015) The iconic image on social media: A rapid research response to the death of Alan Kurdi. Available at: http://visualsocialmedialab.org/projects/the-iconic-image-on-social-media (accessed 1 August 2018).

41.

Wojcieszak

(2007) Al-Jazeera: A challenge to traditional framing research. International Communication Gazette 69(2): 115–128.

42.

World Vision (2017) Syrian Refugee Crisis: Facts, FAQs, and How to Help, 13 July. Available at: https://www.worldvision.org/refugees-news-stories/syrian-refugee-crisis-facts (accessed 1 April 2018).

43.

Zelizer

(2002) Photography, Journalism, and Trauma. In: Zelizer

Allen

(eds) Journalism After September 11. London: Routledge, 46–68.

44.

Zelizer

(2017) What Journalism Could Be. Cambridge: Polity.

45.

Zhang

Hellmueller

(2017) Visual framing of the European refugee crisis in Der Spiegel and CNN International: Global journalism in news photographs. International Communication Gazette 79(5): 483–510. DOI: 10.1177/1748048516688134.

Shifting toward a humanized perspective? Visual framing analysis of the coverage of refugees on CNN and Spiegel Online before and after the iconic photo publication of Alan Kurdi

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References