Depicting conflict in Kosovo and Rwanda: comparative analysis of child victims of ethnic genocide in the Associated Press,1990

Abstract

When images of children in conflict situations are selected for a Western audience, what roles do the images fulfill for the audience? A content analysis of photographs provided by the Associated Press of children in Rwanda and Kosovo suggests that news agencies frame children of conflicts differently, as passive agents or success stories, in accordance with ideological and organizational guidelines. The findings of this study show that the Associated Press depicts children in Rwanda in racially stereotypical ways in comparison to their Kosovar counterparts. The current research examines the ways that news media depict children of color in the context of war and conflict.

Keywords

Associated Press children conflict images Kosovo media framing photojournalism Rwanda

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Al-Ghazzi

(2019) Extreme speech – an archetypal digital witness: The child figure and the media conflict over Syria. International Journal of Communication 13: 3225–3243.

Ali

James

Vultee

(2013) Strike a pose: Comparing Associated Press and UNICEF visual representations of the children of Darfur. African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review 3(1): 1–26.

Anden-Papadopoulos

(2008) The Abu Ghraib torture photographs: News frames, visual culture, and the power of images. Journalism 9(1): 5–30.

BBC News (2019) Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter. BBC News, 4 April. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26875506/ (accessed 27 February 2023).

Borah

(2011). Conceptual issues in framing theory: A systematic examination of a decade’s literature. Journal of Communication 61(2): 246–263.

Brewer

Graf

Willnat

(2003) Priming of framing: Media influence on attitudes toward foreign countries. Gazette 65(6): 493–508.

Chari

(2010) Representation or misrepresentation? The New York Times’s framing of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. African Identities 8(4): 333–349.

Chouliaraki

Stolić

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

Chouliaraki

Stolić

(2019) Photojournalism as political encounter: Western news photography in the 2015 migration ‘crisis’. Visual Communication 18(3): 311–331.

10.

Coleman

(2010) Framing the pictures in our heads: Exploring the framing and agenda-setting effects of visual images. In: D’Angelo

Kuypers

(eds) Doing News Framing Analysis. New York, NY: Routledge, 249–278.

11.

Dallaire

(2019) The media and the Rwandan genocide. In: Thompson

(ed.) Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond. Waterloo, Canada: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 17–31.

12.

De Vreese

Lecheler

(2016) Framing theory. In: Mazzoleni

(ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication. Chichester: John Wiley, 1–10.

13.

Entman

(1991) Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of KAL and Iran Air incidents. Journal of Communication 41(4): 6–27.

14.

Entman

(1993) Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43(4): 51–58.

15.

Fahmy

(2004) Picturing Afghan women: A content analysis of AP wire photographs during the Taliban regime and after the fall of the Taliban regime. International Communication Gazette 66(2): 91–112.

16.

Fair

Parks

(2001) Africa on camera: Television news coverage and aerial imaging of Rwandan refugees. Africa Today 48(2): 34–57.

17.

Gamson

Modigliani

(1987) The changing culture of affirmative action. In: Braungart

Braungart

(eds) Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 3. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 137–177.

18.

Gitlin

(1980). The Whole World is Watching. Berkeley, CA: University of California.

19.

Gitlin

(2003) The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

20.

Goff

, et al. (2014) The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing black children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106(4): 526–545.

21.

Goffman

(1974) Frame analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

22.

Greenwood

Smith

(2007) How the world looks to US: International news in award-winning photographs from the Pictures of the Year, 1943–2003. Journalism Practice 1(1): 82–101.

23.

Hariman

Lucaites

(2003) Public identity and collective memory in U.S. iconic photography: The image of ‘accidental napalm’. Critical Studies in Mass Media 20(1): 35–66.

24.

Holbrooke

(1999) No media – no war. Index on Censorship 28(3): 20–21.

25.

Imanishi

(2022) The boy on the beach: Shifts in US policy discourses on Syrian asylum following the death of Alan Kurdi. Media, Culture & Society 44(5): 882–902.

26.

Kuperus

(1999) Kosovo and Rwanda: Selective interventions? The Center for Public Justice Report. Third Quartet. Available at https://www.cpjustice.org/public/page/content/kosovo_and_rwanda (accessed 28 August).

27.

Lyon

(2005) Beyond Rwanda and Kosovo: The interactive dynamics of international peacekeeping and ethnic mobilization. Global Society 19(3): 267–288.

28.

Malkki

(1996) Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism, and dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377–404.

29.

Messaris

Abraham

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

, et al. (eds) Framing Public Life. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 215–226.

30.

Moeller

(2002) A hierarchy of innocence: The media’s use of children in the telling of international news. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 7(1): 36–56.

31.

Myers

Klak

Koehl

(1996) The inscription of difference: News coverage of the conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia. Political Geography 15(1): 21–46.

32.

Nikolaev

(2009) Images of war: Content analysis of the photo coverage of the war in Kosovo. Critical Sociology 35(1): 105–130.

33.

Pieterse

(1997) Sociology of humanitarian intervention: Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia compared. International Political Science Review 18(1): 71–93.

34.

Pouligny

(2002) Building peace in situations of post-mass crimes. International Peacekeeping 9(2): 201–220.

35.

Roach

(1990) The movement for a new world information and communication order: A second wave? Media, Culture and Society 12(3): 283–307.

36.

Rodgers

Kenix

Thorson

(2007) Stereotypical portrayals of emotionality in news photos. Mass Communication & Society 10(1): 119–138.

37.

Said

(1978) Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage.

38.

Scheufele

(1999) Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication 49(1): 103–122.

39.

Sharkey

(1993) When pictures drive foreign policy. American Journalism Review 15(10): 14–19.

40.

Sinclair

(1990). Neither West nor Third World: The Mexican television industry within the NWICO debate. Media, Culture & Society 12(3): 343–360.

41.

Sontag

(1973) On Photography. Chichester: Picador.

42.

Taylor

(2000) Problems in photojournalism: Realism, the nature of news and the humanitarian narrative. Journalism Studies 1(1): 129–143.

43.

The Pulitzer Prizes: Journalism (2021) The New York Times: Public service. Available at: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2021 (accessed 19 March 2023).

44.

Wells

(2007). Narratives of liberation and narratives of innocent suffering: The rhetorical uses of images of Iraqi children in the British press. Visual Communication 6(1): 55–71.