Apprehending the “Telegenic Dead”: Considering Images of Dead Children in Global Politics

Berents, Helen

doi:10.1093/ips/oly036

Cited by 28 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…The motif of the rescuer cradling the small refugee child evokes the generic icon of ‘Madonna with Child’ as well as more generally the historical constitution of the child as symbolizing innocence (Burman, 1994; Manzo, 2008). This was particularly pronounced in the response to the instantly iconic photos of Alan Kurdi which were also the only ones in our material where the body of the dead refugee is not covered (Berents, 2019: 155). The newspapers in our study chose, with one exception, the one where the Turkish police officer is holding Kurdi in his arms (Figure 4).…”

Section: Qualitative Visual Discourse Analysis Of Five Generic Iconsmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…The distance was shorter and the number of people drowning in single accidents was reduced. But the death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi generated an emotional uproar and calls for political action (Adler-Nissen et al, 2020; Berents, 2019; Mortensen, 2017). With the dramatic increase in the number of people arriving, normal procedures for registration and processing refugees in the first country of arrival collapsed.…”

Section: Events Policies and Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our inclusion of a large number of photographs also enables us to make more general contributions to research on the European refugee crisis and on visual politics in International Relations (IR). The iconic photo of Kurdi has been the subject of study in IR and in Media Studies (Adler-Nissen et al, 2020; Berents, 2019; Mortensen, 2017; Olesen, 2018; Schlag, 2018), and qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of the photos used by the news media has been offered by scholars working in the field of Media Studies (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017; Musarò, 2017; Wilmott, 2017; Zhang and Hellmueller, 2017). Our analysis provides an original contribution to this literature in three respects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

Hansen¹,

Adler‐Nissen²,

Andersen³

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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The European refugee crisis has been communicated visually through images such as those of Alan Kurdi lying dead on the beach, by body bags on the harbor front of Lampedusa, by people walking through Europe and by border guards and fences. This article examines the broader visual environment within which EU policy-making took place from October 2013 to October 2015. It identifies ‘tragedy’ as the key term used by the EU to explain its actions and decisions and points out that discourses of humanitarianism and border control were both in place. The article provides a theoretical account of how humanitarianism and border control might be visualized by news photography. Adopting a multi-method design and analyzing a dataset of more than 1000 photos, the article presents a visual discourse analysis of five generic iconic motifs and a quantitative visual content analysis of shifts and continuity across four moments in time. The article connects these visual analyses to the policies and discourses of the EU holding that the ambiguity of the EU’s discourse was mirrored by the wider visual environment.

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Section: Qualitative Visual Discourse Analysis Of Five Generic Iconsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Events Policies and Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

Hansen¹,

Adler‐Nissen²,

Andersen³

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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“…The first examines the construction of migrants and migration in photojournalism (e.g. Adler-Nissen et al, 2020; Berents, 2019; Bleiker et al, 2013; Chouliaraki and Georgiou, 2022; Chouliaraki and Stolić, 2019; Hansen et al, 2021). This literature examines how visuals, mostly photographs, are used to communicate particular representations of migration, in particular by rendering migration a ‘crisis’.…”

Section: The Visuality–migration Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

2023

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Visuals, including photographs and data visualizations, play a crucial role in the politics of EU border security, both as an internal governance tool (e.g. in surveillance) and as an external means of communication/representation (e.g. in photojournalism). Combining scholarship on photographic representations of migration with literature on surveillance technologies and data visualizations, we argue that these visuals interact to reproduce gendered and racialized meanings of migration and border security. Using a feminist postcolonial lens, we develop an intervisual framework for studying how processes of gendering and racialization render subjects, practices and spaces knowable at the intersection between these visuals. We apply this framework to a case study of Frontex’s Risk Analysis Reports (2010–2021) and demonstrate how it is applicable to other security institutions. The intervisual analysis reveals how the migrant Other and (white) European are visually reproduced through: 1) the (in)visibilization of bodies; 2) the ascription and denial of agency; and 3) the spatialization of borders as ‘frontier imaginings’ that oscillate between fortification and expansionism. The intersectional co-constitution of gender and race, we conclude, is central to the visual politics of Frontex, contributing to problematizing migrants and migration and legitimizing violent border practices.

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“…As quintessential innocents and civilian noncombatants par excellence , children function as the evocative “emotional scenery” ( Brocklehurst, 2015 : 32) of conflict zones. Images of child victims of violence do the work of delegitimizing the acting subjects of that violence and the political projects they may seek to advance ( Beier, 2018 ; Berents, 2019 ). As Katrina Lee-Koo (2018) argues, “the power of these images derives from their capacity to prompt simple narratives of global politics built upon binary constructions of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘good’ and ‘bad’” (p. 49).…”

Section: Childhood Changes Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“This changes things”: Children, targeting, and the making of precision

Beier¹

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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Avoidance of civilian casualties increasingly affects the political calculus of legitimacy in armed conflict. “Collateral damage” is a problem that can be managed through the material production of precision, but it is also the case that precision is a problem managed through the cultural production of collateral damage. Bearing decisively on popular perceptions of ethical conduct in recourse to political violence, childhood is an important site of meaning-making in this process. In pop culture, news dispatches, and social media, children, as quintessential innocents, figure prominently where the dire human consequences of imprecision are depicted. Children thus affect the practical “precision” of even the most advanced weapons, perhaps precluding a strike for their presence, potentially coloring it with their corpses. But who count as children, how, when, where, and why are not at all settled questions. Drawing insights from what the 2015 film, Eye in the Sky, reveals about a key social technology of governance we have already internalized, I explore how childhood is itself a terrain of engagement in the (un)making of precision.

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Apprehending the “Telegenic Dead”: Considering Images of Dead Children in Global Politics

Cited by 28 publications

References 40 publications

The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

The visual international politics of the European refugee crisis: Tragedy, humanitarianism, borders

The (inter)visual politics of border security: Co-constituting gender and race through Frontex’s Risk Analysis

“This changes things”: Children, targeting, and the making of precision

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