Media scholars have recently shown a growing interest in theorizing the western spectatorship of mediated distant suffering. At the same time, not many studies in this field have put their empirical focus on audiences rather than on representation. In this article, we show how theoretical concepts and empirical findings from the field of moral psychology can inform on-going discussions about the witnessing of mediated distant suffering. To this end, we review three themes in the relationship between spectator and sufferer: distance, actuality, and scale. This theoretical intervention aims to provide a renewed impulse to media studies, and to contribute to the development of a future research agenda for studying audiences of mediated suffering.
Although it is generally acknowledged that national elites and the mass media play an important role in the way that societies come to terms with a legacy of war crimes, there is little empirical knowledge about whether and how the mass media actually do contribute to a process of 'facing the past'. Based on the case of Serbia, this study examines press media coverage of war crimes and war crime judiciary during the country's recent post-war period. Adopting a novel approach to the conceptualization and measurement of media frames, the article compares the reporting of war crimes issues in four Serbian newspapers during the period from 2004 to 2006. Five frames were identified: an injustice frame, a denial frame, a factual frame, a benefits frame, and a rejection frame. In conclusion, the study reveals a discourse that is both 'perpetrator centered' and -particularly for the nationalistic press -ethnically biased.
In March 2012, American NGO Invisible Children released an online video about the crimes committed by Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. Rapidly shared through social network sites, Kony 2012 soon earned the title of fastest spreading online video ever produced. At the same time, the video and its makers also came under massive criticism from bloggers, journalists, academics, and the general public. This study offers an exploration of the phenomenon Kony 2012 from an audience perspective. Theoretically building on the literature on mediated distant suffering and empirically based on an online survey, we explore how the video was successful in exerting moral pressure on a critical online audience of ‘Ironic Spectators’. In particular, we investigate to what extent different forms of being critical towards the video and its makers have mitigated a sense of personal moral responsibility to act towards the distant suffering other.
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