Communicating Distant Suffering Through the Camera Lens: A Study of AP News Images of the Syrian Civil War

This dissertation examined The Associated Press (AP) news photographs of civilian suffering in the Syrian civil war using a visual framing approach. By doing a quantitative content analysis on 1,309 AP news images of suffering civilians and refugees, this study revealed that at a denotative level of visual framing, Daily Life, Rescue/Recovery, Human Reaction to Suffering, Journey, and Celebrity Visit were the five most prominent themes in AP visual coverage of humanitarian issues caused by the Syrian civil conflict. A qualitative semiotic analysis was further conducted based on the results from the content analysis in order to decipher visual framing devices used by The Associated Press (AP) at the connotative and ideological levels. Six identified visual frames from the semiotic analysis indicated that old visual tropes of humanitarian images, which are grounded upon stereotypical representations of distant suffering, are still prevalent in the news media today. Semiotic analysis also suggested that the AP visual coverage enacted various forms of moral disposition, such as compassionate care toward suffering and indignation towards perpetrators (e.g., the al-Assad Regime). However, they did not provide an ideal means of provoking a cosmopolitan form of sympathy as they highlighted the victimhood and cultural otherness of suffering Syrians, while privileging the emotions and actions of Western politicians and celebrities. In addition, semi-structured interviews with eight press photographers who had covered human suffering in times of war were conducted for the purpose of enhancing the research findings from the visual analysis.