Valérie Gorin

Desirable people: Identifying social values through celebrity news

In this article, we define the notion of ‘celebrity news’, emphasizing the fact that the portrayal of film stars embodies the imitable and the inimitable and, consequently, points towards values. In that context, we discuss the results of a thematic content analysis of a wide corpus of the daily and weekly European, French-speaking printed media to reveal which values are highlighted in celebrity news; we also compare these results with the contemporary values which emerge from recent European and global surveys of values. We then compare the various types of printed media. Finally, we focus on a specific aspect emerging from the main content analysis: the ‘meltdown’ or ‘fall from grace’, which records the decline of a star figure. Such narratives are good examples of syncretism in values, in which very contradictory attributes in celebrities are made to coexist, yet in which the subversive aspect of such a confrontation is passed over. We conclude by showing that the widespread negotiation of different values perceptible in reporting on celebrity figures is a sign of an era of change and re-evaluation, and therefore deserving of study.

Mediatized Conflict and Visual News Framing: How Swiss Audiences React to News Images from the Syrian War

The Syrian conflict has challenged both the ways of reporting war and its impact on the public. However, only a few empirical studies have tried to assess public reactions to representations of war. In this paper, we use an empirically-based study that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how Swiss audiences react to crisis reporting and visual news framing in French-speaking Swiss media. The study offers a preliminary understanding of how people react to images in the media, especially with respect to military and political contexts, and also builds a visual map of how audiences process information contained in news images of war.

L’enfance comme figure compassionnelle: étude transversale de l’iconographie de la famine aux dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles

Despite the growing interest in the use of child images in humanitarian contexts in the last few years, there has been no transverse study of the iconography of famines in contemporary times. On the contrary, this iconography has been analysed in a scattered way, in disciplinary boundaries that prevent a more global understanding of the birth and use of these images. By comparing the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, the purpose of this article is to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well as to internationalise the humanitarian response. This analysis of Western visual strategies and media mobilisations throughout the twentieth century helps to put into perspective the so-called rupture between a first and a second age of humanitarianism. It shows first how young generations have become a privileged form of representation since the nineteenth century, using an aesthetic universe that is morally compelling; then, later, how the depoliticisation of the victim’s figure engages a political message.

Innovation(s) in Photojournalism

This paper examines the place of amateur imagery and citizen photojournalism in Time magazine’s photoblog, Lightbox. If user-generated content has been seen as a threat by professional photojournalists in the last decade, Lightbox offers a paradigmatic example to understand if the visual elite still has a dominant status in the decision-making processes of news production. This paper, therefore, explores how citizen imagery is shaping and challenging a photojournalistic culture still influenced by criteria of excellence, legitimacy, and authority. Managed by professional photo editors, Lightbox has included a variety of sections which emphasize new, original work by professional photographers as well as weekly news reviews that sometimes incorporate amateur photography. Through a visual analysis of amateur imagery in Lightbox’s sections and a textual examination of the editors’ discussions on citizen photojournalism, this paper analyzes how the photoblog is adapting to the shift towards a digital age of innovation and hybridity. The results show that photo editors apply strategies to delimit citizen productions by very rarely selecting them and avoiding specific mention of the amateur nature of such images. Moreover, they underline that hybridity is understood not as multimodal content and co-creative processes between professional and amateur incorporations, but rather as professional and creative practices, for example by highlighting innovative photographers who use cell phone imagery and photo-sharing websites. While this paper interrogates the new careers in photography of amateurs turned professionals, it also shows how digital platforms emphasize the photographers’ personal initiatives over usual gatekeeping processes.