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An Exploration of Photojournalism in War Reporting and Its Conceptualization Within the Scope of War and Peace Journalism

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An Exploration of Photojournalism in War Reporting and Its Conceptualization Within the Scope of War and Peace Journalism Södertörns Högskola International Masterʼs Program in Journalism Master thesis 2020 Student: Laura Jaël Marie Geigenberger Due date: May 27, 2020 Supervisor: Nina Springer (Ph.D.) “Seeing is believing ... ?” An exploration of photojournalism in war reporting and its conceptualization within the scope of War and Peace Journalism Abstract: Journalism is a profession which bears many social and political responsibilities. Particularly war correspondence is a challenging task for professional journalists and thus constitutes a decisive part in the academic field of Journalism Studies. In order to evaluate the role of journalitic conduct in times of war, it is commonly dichotomized into two opposing concepts known as War and Peace Journalism. The concepts are most often studied in connection with text- based journalism which is why scholars have been stressing the need to create a similar conceptualization for photojournalism – a profession with a great relevance in war correspondence. First research approaches resulted in models such as War and Peace Photography which, however, only considered the visual contents of photojournalistic documents. However, particularly the legacy of images can be dynamic – hence, subject to change over long periods of time – and consequently alter the reception and categorization of a news photograph as either a War and Peace document. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to explore the notion that many different aspects need to be taken into account before a fair and productive categorization of such documents can be offered. In addition to the method of visual analysis, it thus entails an empirical study in a triangulation setting in which photojournalistic material on the Vietnam War, the picturesʼ captions as well as their additional documentary material regarding the broader historical and political (e.g. published interviews, governmental documents, articles) will be analyzed in three consecutive steps: (1) The photos are assessed in terms of their War or Peace classification based on their visual impression; (2) the captures are analyzed content-analytically and put in relation with the visual observations; (3) the additional documentary material is explored to understand the picturesʼ social, political, and historical genesis. For the purpose of the latter, a new category system has been defined and assigned to the sample images. Findings indicate that a visual categorization of an image are not necessarily supported by its captions as well as the respective surrounding historical, political and social circumstances. Additionally considered context might contrast the most basic definitions of War and Peace Journalism. For example, the assessed cases of War Photojournalism were not used for “propaganda” purposes – an often-ascribed feature of War Journalism. From this, it can be concluded that visuals are only one of many factors which can impact the meaning and reception of an image and, as a consequence, its categorization. Sufficient conceptualizations of photojournalistic documents should thus consider not only what is obvious but also the experiences, actions, professional values and intentions of photojournalists within the images’ prehistory and aftermath, reasons for their publication, their reception by an audience, and external influences on their respective medium. Keywords: Photojournalism, War Journalism, Peace Journalism, News images, War correspondence, Conceptualization, Journalism Studies Contents 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 2. Journalism – a “social glue”.............................................................................................................4 2.1 Ethics and responsibilities in professional journalism.................................................................4 2.2 Photojournalism............................................................................................................................5 2.3 Ethics and responsibilities in photojournalism.............................................................................6 2.4 Wartime reporting.........................................................................................................................8 2.5 Academic conceptualizations of conflict coverage: War and Peace Journalism..........................9 3. Taking the concepts to news photography......................................................................................11 3.1 War Photography........................................................................................................................11 3.2 Visual criteria for War Photojournalism.....................................................................................12 3.3 Peace Photography.....................................................................................................................16 3.4 Visual criteria for Peace Photojournalism..................................................................................17 4. Reflections on journalistic practice................................................................................................19 4.1 Photojournalists are more than ‘simply’ photographers.............................................................20 4.2 Gatekeeping and “hyperreality” theory......................................................................................22 4.2.1 Visual gatekeeping ................................................................................................................23 4.2.2 “Hyperreality” in photojournalism........................................................................................24 4.3 Contexts and captions.................................................................................................................25 5. Peace (Photo)Journalism is controversial.......................................................................................27 5.1 Proposition and opposition of Peace Journalism........................................................................27 5.2 Imaging peace.............................................................................................................................28 6. Recap and research questions.........................................................................................................30 7. Methods..........................................................................................................................................32 7.1 Sampling.....................................................................................................................................32 7.2 Operationalization and data collection.......................................................................................34 7.3 Critical reflections on the data collection procedure .................................................................38 8. Results............................................................................................................................................39 8.1 Visual analysis and conceptualization of the images according to Fahmy & Neumann............39 8.2 Beyond the visuals I: The captions.............................................................................................40 8.3 Beyond the visuals II: Consideration and interpretation of the background material................41 9. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................48 References..........................................................................................................................................51 Appendix............................................................................................................................................60 1 1. Introduction Academic models are usually a simplification or approximation of an aspect of reality in all its intricacy rather than an accurate depiction of it.1 In order to study the practices and features of journalism and photography – professions, which have long been the subject of academic research – scholars have established models and academic concepts. However, what needs to be considered is that journalism is originally a practical activity; therefore, it depends on its surrounding and situational circumstances. This raises the question about which aspects need to be considered so that theory and practice can be converged closely as possible in order to maximize the contribution which theoretical conceptualizations can bring to practitioners such as photojournalists. Particularly photojournalists working as war correspondents face many challenges and have to live up to great responsibilities. Their reporting practices have also been explored by the academy and are most commonly interpreted within the scope of two opposing concepts known as “War” and “Peace Journalism”. The models refer predominately to text-based journalism but have also been expanded to visual journalism. The dichotomies of War and Peace (Photo)Journalism are still widely debated within the academy – as are the criteria needed to formulate precise definitions. In order to integrate news photography into the War and Peace Journalism concepts, the consideration of their visual content seems to be an obvious starting point. Such strategies have already been suggested; and yet they have also been criticized by many scholars, who
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