Visual journalism, witnessing, and the contested terrain of victimhood

This chapter argues that visual journalism as a digital practice holds significant importance in creating and maintaining the present-day "victimology." The chapter examines the visual witnessing of violent death as a hybrid journalistic practice in which hierarchies of the value of life are constructed and reinforced. Special emphasis is placed on (1) the intersections between professional journalistic practices and the practices of ordinary users of media and user-generated content in today's witnessing of violent death and (2) questions of dignity and respect in the present-day politics of victimhood. The four empirical examples illustrate the chapter's conceptual reflections: the death of the Iranian female demonstrator Neda Agha-Soltan (2009), the death of the Syrian refugee child Alan Kurdi (2015), the death of the first victim of the Christchurch terror attack Haji Daoud Nabi (2019) in New Zealand, and George Floyd (2020), an African-American man murdered by the police in Minneapolis, USA. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the truth value and moral urgency in today's visual witnessing and the related construction of victimhood as a contested terrain.