The Role of the Source in Framing Wars and Conflicts and in the Use of Propaganda in Web-based Photo Essays. (original) (raw)

This study analyzed photo essays through the lenses of peace journalism and visual persuasion theories. Media outlets are often associated with a type of journalism depicting conflict and war, while nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are often expected to report peaceful causes and humanitarian action. This study incorporated a content analysis to compare how media outlets and NGOs use photo essays to report violence, conflict, and crisis in the world. It also determined whether media outlets actually use more frequently a war frame than NGOs and, plausibly, whether NGOs use more often a peace frame than media outlets in their photo essays. Hence, this study involved a separate coding of the photos and texts for each photo essay. The resulting data provided an opportunity to differentiate the journalistic approach employed in texts and in photos, by varying sources, and by reporting distinct events. This study is significant in several ways. First, it fills in a gap in the existing literature about the prominence of visual persuasion in photo essays. Second, it informs practitioners about the contemporary usage of photo essays by various sources. Finally, it educates readers-viewers about the content of the photo essays, the various styles used by different sources, and to the available ways to identify and decode propaganda techniques. Keywords: peace journalism, visual persuasion, cognitive dissonance, photo essay, media outlets, nongovernmental organizations.