Humanity washed ashore

Early September we got reminded of the tragical refugee crisis. On the 2nd of september, at least twelve Syrian refugees who attempted to cross the ocean from Turkey to Greece drowned. One of them was the three year old boy who became well known through the iconic photograph that was taken of him after he washed ashore. Before the picture of the boy, lying with his face down on the beach, got published by traditional Western news media, it had to go viral on the internet. The picture, first published by Turkish newspapers, got shared on Twitter by influential people working as correspondents or for human rights associations.[1] In this blogpost we will illustrate how a powerful image of such a tragic event can function as an agenda setting agent for politicians, and the how traditional news media interact with citizens when it comes to violent images. In order to do so we will focus on the circulation of the photo both on- and offline.

After the photograph of the boy named Aylan Kurdi was published in Turkish news papers, influential people started sharing the picture on the same day via Twitter. It didn't took long before the photo went viral with the Turkish hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik, or Humanity Washed Up Ashore.[2] After discussions inside newsrooms about whether or not to publish these images, the picture appeared on many front pages worldwide on the 3th of September.[3]

Before the picture of the boy was shared online, twelve refugees dying on their way to Europe however wasn't that frontpage worthy. Through mainstream news media we know that there is a refugee crisis going on and we know that there are people dying. However, with the death of the Turkish boy, all of a sudden the refugee crisis was on all front pages. The newspaper The Independent declared that they took the decision to publish these shocking images because, 'among the often glib words about the "ongoing migrant crisis", it is all too easy to forget the reality of the desperate situation facing many refugees.'[4]

Especially the fact that they name remembrance as an important motivation to publish the picture is interesting. According to The Independent, placing a shocking picture seemed an effective way to remember the audience of the desperate situation of many refugees that we otherwise tend to forget. As David Trend in his article But We Can Understand it: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate puts it:

Media Violence helps us remember the terrible things people can do. This is very important at a time when the immediacy and enormous quantity of information people receive tends to drown anything but the present moment.[5]

He also states that 'memory is an important weapon in guarding against the repetition of human failure'.[6] We would like to state that we needed a picture of an innocent child, victimized by a world he didn't choose to live in, in order to come in action.

While news media are sometimes being accused by wanting to increase their sales by publishing violent pictures, the newspaper The Independent accompanied the story with a petition in order to put the refugee crisis on the political agenda which you can still sign here.[7] Besides the fact that powerful, violent images circulated through various media can be a way of speeding up a negotiation between disagreeing political parties, this example shows that news media themselves even started to actively engage in politics.[8]

David Trend argues that 'images of suffering can turn into objects separated from the thing itself. People look at the images without seeing the actual pain.'[9] We however think that the picture of the boy shows the exact opposite. Let’s make this clear by using the following quote:

Roland Barthes believed that shocking images of human suffering send us the message that horror has already happened and is over. The pictures offer evidence of something the viewer will not experience. “Such images do not compel us to action, but to acceptance. The action has already been taken, and we are not implicated”.[10]

First of all we think that the horror is not over. The death of the boy has taken place, but by seeing this picture we are remembered of the possibility that many refugees will follow if we don't do anything soon. The fact the horror isn't over and that we can and must do something to help these people, in our opinion turns this violent picture in a shocking one. And only after the shocked reactions of citizens regarding the picture, politicians had to follow. On the third of september Dutch prime minister Rutte proclaimed in this interview with broadcasting agency RTL that the migration policy has to be changed.

In the article Representing Death in the Online Age Folker Hanusch writes about the dynamics between citizens and mainstream media when it comes to remembering death. He elaborates on the potential of the participation in news messages by citizens on the internet and calls this ‘Citizen journalism’. He states that Citizen journalism has, especially during war times, the potential to undermine propaganda efforts by governments.[11] As a consequence of the recent arrival of new media, journalism in that way is democratized; As Hanusch states 'In this way, the Internet may provide a space through which the ‘public sphere’ (Habermas, 1989) can be reclaimed from what are deemed all-powerful media corporations.'[12]

Hanusch states that citizen journalism can serve as a tool for crisis communication since people that are on the spot are able to construct images directly.[13] While Hanusch here focusses on the way in which local news content is produced for mainstream media, we would like to argue that this also works the other way around; by sharing the picture of the boy published by Turkish newspapers on social media, people from all around the world show that they are actively engaged with the crisis going on elsewhere. Citizen journalism is not only a powerful tool for critically engaging in mainstream journalism; through citizen journalism, mainstream news media also know what the demand of the public is. 'These so-called citizen journalists are not only challenging the dominance of media organizations, they are also being co-opted by news media to help in the newsgathering process.'[14]

We would like to argue that through sharing the picture of the washed ashore toddler on social media, people from all over the world showed what mattered to them. The picture of the boy shows that shocking images can release a chain reaction from citizen journalists to the news media, and politics. We needed the picture to be reminded again of the refugee crisis in order to come in action. Until the picture will slowly shift to the background of our memories and continue our self-centered lives. Do we then really need another picture to be shocked again?

Proposition: Politicians are more likely to put issues on their political agenda's when citizen journalism plays a big role in the way the news reaches us.

Note for the lecturer: We were having personal troubles in writing about this issue. In a way it felt like misusing the situation by writing about the media industries. Therefore we have decided to leave the text of Lynn Comella out. We however felt like this was an important issue to address, since analyzing it in a media industries perspective allows us to look at the underlying processes of the role of news circulation in politics in this case by both mainstream media and citizens.

Notes:

[1] Mackey, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Withnall, 2015.

[5] Trend, 2007: 121.

[6] Trend, 2007: 122.

[7] Mackey, 2015.

[8] Trend, 2007: 121.

[9] Trend, 2007: 118.

[10] Trend, 2007: 118.

[11] Hanusch, 2010: 152.

[12] Hanusch, 2010: 147.

[13] Hanusch, 2010: 148.

[14] Hanusch, 2010: 148.

References:

• Hanusch, F. (2010), ‘Representing Death in the Online Age’, in: Representing Death in the News: Journalism, Media and Mortality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145-160.
• Mackey, R. (2015) 'Brutal Images of Syrian Boy Drowned Off Turkey Must Be Seen, Activists Say', in: The New Tork Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/world/middleeast/brutal-images-of-syrian-boy-drowned-off-turkey-must-be-seen-activists-say.html?_r=1 (07-11-2015).
• Trend, D. (2007), ‘But We Can Understand It: Beyond Polemics in the Media Violence Debate’, in: The Myth of Media Violence: A Critical Introduction. Malden, Oxford & Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 108-123.
• Withnall, A. (2015) 'If these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead Syrian child washed up on a beach don't change Europe's attitude to refugees, what will?', in: The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/if-these-extraordinarily-powerful-images-of-a-dead-syrian-child-washed-up-on-a-beach-don-t-change-10482757.html (07-11-2015).

A. vd. B., V. M., J. P.