Seeing and not seeing the Syrian crisis: New visibility and the visual framing of the Syrian conflict in seven newspapers and their online editions

This cross-national study analyzes the visual construction of the Syrian crisis in the quality press of seven countries. The crisis has held the world’s attention for over two and a half years and provides a compelling case study due to the difficulties professional journalists have in covering its events as well as the Syrian opposition’s innovative social media strategies, which focus on the dissemination of eyewitness images. Moreover, there are stark divisions in the political discussion about how to respond to the mounting crisis – a discussion fueled by footage uploaded to social media sites by opposition activists. There is however little empirical evidence of how the conflict has been made visible in the international media, or how Syrian activists’ images figure in this mediatedvisibility. The study compares the use of visual imagery in The Guardian (UK), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), La Repubblica (Italy), Romania Libera (Romania), El País (Spain), Kommersant (Russia), and Hürriyet (Turkey). It asks how mainstream newspapers visually construct a conflict when the access of professional media to the conflict zone is restricted, but an abundance of non-traditional visual source material is being made available by activists.