By contrasting the uses of image-as-evidence and documentary-as-witness, this report challenges some of the maxims of documentary film studies and exposes the ways in which different forms of audiovisual media construct distant conflict. More specifically, the report analyzes a purposive case selection of videos/films related to the Syrian uprising: the first set of visual data includes a montage of 13 YouTube videos claiming to show the aftereffects of the 21 August 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria; the visual analysis in section two centers upon a selection of 15 short documentary films produced by the Syrian Abounaddara Collective. Theoretically, the study advances the value of witnessing in the re-envisioning of documentary film. My research demonstrates the relative weakness of both legalistic and journalistic approaches to depicting war that treat visual material primarily as recorded fact or evidence. In its place, the report advances a new form of documentary with a higher degree of interpretive acumen based on the "emergency cinema" model developed in Syria -- what I term "documentary-as-witness." / text

This thesis examines how secrecy and absence shape the representation of covert counter-terrorism in the public sphere. Contemporary covert practices, from missile strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles to special forces 'kill/capture' operations, have come to exemplify U.S. counter-terrorism in public debate. This is significant because these practices shift the ethical stakes of witnessing state warfare. Previous scholarship on war and news media has argued that public glimpses of state violence, alongside official declarations, can demonise or dehumanise the targets of such violence, and thus prompt witnesses to accept the state's rationalisation of these actions and the use of secrecy. News coverage of contemporary covert action, however, offers no such glimpses. Instead, coverage draws primarily upon residue: the rumours and debris left behind. By applying this concept of residue to drone strikes, the special forces raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and kidnap rescue efforts in the Sahara-Sahel, the thesis argues that it is all this speculation, rubble, and empty space, rather than the state itself, which signifies to newsreaders the possibility of state secrecy. That suspicion of secrecy then frames the absences in this residue, the conspicuous lack of certain bodies and objects. Secrecy makes those absences appear suggestive, in that the latter cannot publicly corroborate different aspects of these unseen events. This allows residue to intimate – to hint at unverifiable ideas about that which is absent, in a way which can undermine more explicit claims and justifications of what has taken place. To examine how this dynamic reframes the ethics of witnessing, the thesis develops an historical affiliation, a method of linking disparate practices of violence based on similar representational qualities, in order to examine whether witnessing is being shaped by these qualities in obscured or unspoken ways. This affiliation is made between representations of covert counter-terrorism and those of lynching in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite their differences, in both cases unseen violence and absent bodies are represented as significant in their being disconnected from wider society and difficult to comprehend, to understand how and why the violence takes place. This occurs in today's counter-terrorism through hints and allusions from absence, which represent these covert events as physically intangible. As with lynching, violence and its casualties are implicitly represented in their absence as reflecting the public's intellectual and moral distance from the practice. This takes covert counter-terrorism beyond a binary of fostering assent or dissent towards the state. Instead of prompting newsreaders' complicity with state narratives for its actions, residue intimates doubts and unspoken possibilities about these events that curtail their rationalisation. Insodoing, however, these representations marginalise the violence inflicted upon casualties from ethical consideration. They do so while obscuring how that marginalisation occurs, as newsreaders are prompted to see themselves as distanced from these events and to focus upon that distance, rather than on how absences are being given significance in the public sphere. Using the historical affiliation with lynching, the thesis concludes that an ethical witnessing of covert counter-terrorism through its residue cannot be based on an attempt to recognise and 'recover' lived experiences of suffering from rumours and debris. Rather, ethical witnessing would involve an awareness of how distance is constructed through that residue, and how this gives unspoken meaning to absence.

This qualitative and explanatory study focuses on the concept of ‘media witnessing’, which concerns witnessing media texts performed in, by, and through the media. The aim is to determine how people from different backgrounds engage with news photographs of Syrian children which went viral in 2015 and 2016. Furthermore, this study uses the analytical framework of media witnessing created by Maria Kyriakidou (2015). The framework was made to analyse four different reactions to distant, mediated suffering: affective, ecstatic, politicised and detached. This framework is tested and adapted for this study to identify the engagement experience of individuals with new viral photographs. These photographs were taken by professional photojournalists. The data was collected via semi-structured, two-person interviews known as dyadic interviews. Participants were recruited by way of purposive and snowball sampling. In the end, four dyadic interviews were conducted which involved eight individuals in total. During each interview, two participants looked together at four viral news photographs and discussed their thoughts and feelings based on an interview guide. All dyadic interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The study material—four transcripts—was finally analysed using a thematic analysis method. Themes were based on modes of media witnessing. The analysis reveals a fifth mode of response—first-hand witnessing—which is linked to an individual’s own experience and past. Finally, this study claims that an adapted framework constitutes a suitable way to analyse people’s engagement but that there is a need for further study of media witnessing.

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).