In this thesis I analyse the reporting and the reception of news about distant suffering in the light of John Howard Yoder‘s work on witness. Studies of news reporting about foreign wars, genocide and disasters commonly conclude that the practice of bearing witness to distant suffering contributes to a context where both journalists and spectators appear to have limited moral agency. I argue that the practice of bearing witness has ethical significance for those actively engaged in bearing witnessing. In his work on Christian witness, Yoder demonstrates how witness can be understood as a method for moral reasoning. I assert that Yoder‘s argument presents a fruitful approach for interdisciplinary consideration of the ethical significance found in the practice of bearing witness to distant human suffering. In chapter one, I lay the foundation of my investigation into the ethical agency involved in bearing witness. John Howard Yoder‘s theological approach to social ethics provides that foundation. Central to Yoder‘s claim that witness is a form of ethics, is the premise that presence testifies. Yoder calls this the 'phenomenology of social witness‘. Yoder‘s work opens new ways in which to ask questions about the practice of bearing witness as a form of social ethics. It is from this foundation that I begin to ask questions about the news media practice of bearing witness to distant suffering, the subject of chapter two. Media practices are social practices that involve a dense interaction of many layers of society. In the media practice of witnessing distant suffering, governments, charities, news media organisations, and audiences are all involved in what I call the social formation of the Global Samaritan. The foundational work on Yoder in chapter one allows me to ask the question: How is the Global Samaritan a presence, and to what does this presence testify? In chapters three and four, I focus on two of the prominent groups which contribute to the formation of the Global Samaritan: audiences and foreign correspondents. News audiences as moral agents already seem a problem for Yoder‘s claim that presence testifies. Do audiences who bear witness to distant suffering have moral agency? How can the amorphous and fleeting presence of television, internet, or twitter audiences testify? In the chapter on audiences, the initial claim regarding presence makes for an important investigation into how audiences can potentially move beyond mere spectatorship and towards participation in care for the suffering. Foreign correspondents bearing witness to distant suffering do not face the same obstacles to testifying as audiences do. After all, foreign correspondents are often live, on-the-scene of extraordinary circumstances of suffering. The danger and risks foreign correspondents face in order to report live from scenes of devastation and disaster testify to the fact that the situation is indeed dangerous and causing suffering. Yoder‘s claim that presence testifies is a claim strongly paralleled within the tradition of investigative journalism. In chapter four, I investigate the ethical function of foreign correspondent presence. I consider the foreign correspondent‘s dual role as the proxy 'eyes and ears‘ of the public and the proxy voice for those without a voice. Through these two roles, I explore major concepts involved in the practice of investigative journalism. One prominent issue I explore is the tension between the principles of a liberal democratic press and the practice of frontline reporters live, on-the-scene of extraordinary and extreme situations. In the final chapter, chapter five, I focus on the experience of three frontline reporters bearing witness to human suffering. BBC [British Broadcasting Company] reporter John Simpson‘s reflections on his coverage of the beginning of the Iraq War illustrate the importance of bearing witness as involving real presence on location. Norwegian freelance reporter Ǻsne Seierstad‘s reflections on covering the Iraq War from Baghdad further contributes to the concept of 'being there‘ as central to bearing witness. Focus on Seierstad also furthers discussion on women reporters bearing witness to war. The third reporter I highlight is BBC reporter Fergal Keane. I focus on his reflections covering the Rwandan genocide to illustrate how the claim to bearing witness involves more than spectatorship, but often involves participation. I conclude with an analysis of the media practice of bearing witness, involving the range of reporter presence to the quasi-presence of the audience, in the light of John Howard Yoder‘s claim that bearing witness is a form of social ethics.

Short-term international immersion travel connects participants from educational and religious organizations with distant suffering to build solidarity and motivate transnational civic action. It is a distinct form of transnational social action that produces a personalized, embodied experience of transformation. Despite increasing popularity, and increasing evidence that this form of travel can facilitate civic action and activism, the mechanisms behind the production, experience, and outcomes are not well known. This research examines these issues through a focus on multiple cultural processes. The research site is BorderLinks, a faith-affiliated organization that promotes immigration awareness through travel along the U.S.-Mexico border. I use participant observation with different groups (colleges, seminaries, churches), pre/post surveys with 180 participants, and interviews with participants to examine why individuals participate, how transformative experience is produced, how group styles stabilize this moment of unsettledness, the difficulties of solidarity formation, and the specific patterns of outcomes. Short-term international immersion travel is a cultural strategy of transformation that provides participants with identity shaping experiences and fits the goals of feeder organizations that prioritize personal transformation and social engagement. Recruitment through feeder organizations creates groups with distinct demographic profiles, motivational repertoires, and emotional orientations: the "toolkits of travel." An immersion trip sits in a liminal space of culture, yet the institutional origins of groups generate group styles that guide groups through this unsettledness (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003). Some groups "sleuth" while others "story build," resulting in different imaginations of possible future action. The encounter with migrants addresses a central question of how solidarity between international travelers and distant suffering is formed. I show the importance of two strategies of solidarity, one relational and one imaginative. Through a hike in the desert, I show the conditions for producing evoking symbols that moralize the experience into the future. I examine change in economic behavior, attitudes, and some civic activity. I use Qualitative Comparative Analysis to show which aspects of immersion travel are most responsible for change: emotional intensification, moralized situations, cognitive awareness, and/or group affiliation. For participants' narrative construction, differences in group use of reflexivity resources affect the moral extension into the future.

This thesis explores of how American and British television mediated the crisis that started with the 4 April 2017 alleged chemical attack in Syria and culminated with the subsequent attack on Syria by the United States 7 April 2017. It builds upon a rich literature and focuses on the politics of pity in the mediated representation of distant suffering as set out by Luc Boltanski. The thesis utilizes a methodological approach which merges Lilie Chouliaraki’s ‘analytics of mediation’ with Roxanne Lynn Doty’s view of discourse analysis. The results find that CNNW mediated the distant suffering based on ostensibly a priori knowledge, whereas BBC News was more inclined to guide the spectators along a line of investigative reasoning.

When a person drives a truck into the middle of a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, horrifying images, and witnessing stories is spread around the world. The Swedish nationwide evening tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet publishes the story during one week on their Facebook page, resulting in thousands of comments. This paper examines the interactive audience responses on social media towards the encounter of suffering caused in the Nice attack, 14th July 2016. Using framing analysis in combination with a qualitative content analysis the study focuses on 702 comments provided on Aftonbladets Facebook wall. This study analyses the opinions towards suffering visible in the material during the first days of the attack. Frame theory and media witnessing are used as theoretical framework. The analysis reveals four frames: the moral conflict frame where people criticize the witnessing by media, the reality conflict frame where people emphasizes suffering as a global issue, the justice conflict frame where suffering is discussed in terms compassion as something you deserve, and the emotional frame where people’s feelings of witnessing suffering is in focus. Previous research says that audiences are more likely to feel compassion towards victims if they can see themselves in them and/or if there is a short cultural and spatial distance between them, and this study has come to the same conclusion. However, this study contributes with knowledge about how the social media users negotiate compassion (the justice conflict frame and reality conflict frame) and focus on the questions of ethics when it comes to distant suffering (the moral conflict frame and emotional frame).

This study deals with the distinct difference in media attention the earthquake-disaster in Haiti and the flood-disaster in Pakistan got in 2010. There may be many reasons to this divergence, but this study focuses on how news articles can create compassion.    This study, with its critical perspective, examines how two daily papers in Sweden portray the suffering of the victims of the catastrophes in Haiti and Pakistan, and create compassion for them. Furthermore it asks the question who benefits from the newspaper’s description of human suffering in the third world.    The result shows that the manner of which Swedish daily newspapers report from the catastrophe in Haiti creates an emotional involvement, which most likely leads to compassion. Furthermore it shows potential to lead the readers to identify with the suffering people in Haiti.    The Swedish daily newspapers report of the catastrophe in Pakistan on the other hand, does not involve the reader on an emotional level, but gives them the role of a spectator. However the result also indicates that the distance between the victim and the reader is reducing. In that remark the report have potential to create compassion for the victims in Pakistan, although it is more likely that this does not occur.    In conclusion the study shows that the Swedish daily newspapers report of the catastrophes in Haiti and Pakistan is embedded in an ideology, which reproduces a global hierarchy of suffering by reproducing the construction of an Us and Them. In addition this study reveals a social conception of the West as more worthy compassion than the third world, and therefore the Swedish daily newspapers report of the catastrophes reproduces the West’s dominance and power in the society.