Digital Witnessing in War Journalism: The Case of Post-Arab Spring Conflicts

The prominence of citizen voice in contemporary war and conflict reporting has been both hailed as a democratic turn that gives visibility to hitherto powerless audiences and deplored as a demotic turn that sensationalises the news and marginalises deeper understandings of conflict. Rather than taking sides in this debate, I privilege an analytical approach that conceptualises war and conflict reporting as a securitisation of news—a discursive practice by which citizen voice is used to construe conflict as a humanitarian emergency, in line with contemporary conceptions of Western warfare, and to legitimise forms of action. I subsequently look into BBC’s convergent reporting on two post-Arab Spring conflicts, Libya and Syria, so as to explore precisely how citizen voice participates in securitising the news and which discourses of action it articulates.