Journalism and Eyewitness Images Digital Media, Participation, and Conflict [Hardcover]

Building on the vast research conducted on war and media since the 1970s, scholars are now studying the digital transformation of the production of news. Little scholarly attention has been paid, however, to non-professional, eyewitness visuals, even though this genre holds a still greater bearing on the way conflicts are fought, communicated, and covered by the news media. This volume examines the power of new technologies for creating and disseminating images in relation to conflicts. Mortensen presents a theoretical framework and uses case studies to investigate the impact of non-professional images with regard to essential issues in todays media landscape: including new media technologies and democratic change, the political mobilization and censorship of images, the ethics of spectatorship, and the shifting role of the mainstream news media in the digital age.

Introduction: Eyewitness Images and Mediatized Conflict  1. The Eyewitness in the Media  2. Eyewitness Images as a Genre, Genres of Eyewitness Images  3. Mediatized Conflict  4. Counter-Images: Visual Censorship and the Challenges of Digital Media  the Snapshot of US Soldiers (2004) and the Bootleg Tape of Saddam Husseins Hanging (2006)  5. The Unintentional News Icon: The Canonization and Political Mobilization of the Footage of Neda Agha Soltan in the Post-Election Revolt Iran (2009)  6. Metacoverage and Mediatized Conflict: WikiLeaks Release of Collateral Murder (2010) and the Transformation of the Information Flow  7. Citizen Investigation and Eyewitness Images: The Boston Marathon Bombing (2013)  Conclusion

This concise study examines the conflation of news media and the social phenomenon of individual citizens taking pictures and videos... Mortensen (Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark) examines more than just the idea that the audience is now a partner in content creation; she provides slÏ