Media Morality and Visual Icons in the Age of Social Media: Alan Kurdi and the Emergence of an Impromptu Public of Moral Spectatorship

Abstract

New and social media are increasingly used to raise issues of global justice. Images and texts representing distant suffering in an emotionally charged way involve users of social media in debates about ethical standards and moral responsibility. This raises the question of how social media users react to such evidence about instances of distant suffering. How and under which conditions are users’ involvement in discourses of global justice enhancing new practices of civic engagement and redefining the boundaries of solidarity? Our point of departure is the so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe in fall 2015, which raised questions of distant spectatorship and moral responses with renewed urgency and immediacy. We consider the conditions of collective reception and interpretation of visual icons of human suffering, which became viral through social media in this period. We first situate social media reception in the framework for the analysis of moral spectatorship. We secondly explore the link between iconic images and the emergence of so-called impromptu publics of moral spectatorship. As an empirical case, we refer to the performance of reddit discussion groups in confronting the salient images of Alan Kurdi, the drowned boy from Syria found at the beach in Turkey in September 2015.

KEYWORDS:

• moral spectatorship
• social media
• visual icons
• impromptu publics
• Alan Kurdi

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mette Mortensen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5313-9653

Notes

1. “Refugee crisis” in this context refers to the suffering and challenges related to refugees arriving from Syria and neighbouring countries in 2015, which were referred to by this term primarily in European and other western media.

2. Facebook has recently introduced an important and long-expected change in the use of the “like” bottom, allowing now for a much broader expression of feelings in relation to content. Instead of introducing a dichotomy of “liking” and “disliking” (thumbs up and down), which would open space for political controversies, preference is given to a range of emotional reactions like laughing, angry, sad or shocked faces or hearts.

3. Accessed 22 September 2016. http://en.ejo.ch/research/research-how-europes-newspapers-reported-the-migration-crisis

4. This latter aspect is emphasised in the typology offered by Kyriakidou (2015), who distinguishes between affective, ecstatic, politicised and detached witnessing.

5. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cupqz7

6. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cupk8v4

7. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cuqdr6q

8. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/

9. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cuq89ot

10. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cupn8jz

11. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/

12. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/curcvg9

13. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/cuslafx

14. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/IconicImages/comments/3jirma/aylan_kurdi_a_little_boy_who_drowned_trying_to/cuq35wd

15. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/curbj5j

16. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/3jh4si/the_independent_we_asked_david_cameron_if_britain/cup9l8q

17. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/cur038w

18. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/cur7on5

19. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/curdk7n

20. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/3k77wf/is_the_story_of_the_drowned_refugee_boy_in_greece/

21. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/3jicbk/aylan_kurdi/

22. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/

23. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/3jo5tx/europes_policy_did_not_kill_aylan_kurdi/

24. Accessed 22 September 2016. https://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/3k77wf/is_the_story_of_the_drowned_refugee_boy_in_greece/

Additional information

Funding

This article was funded by the UCPH Excellence Program for Interdisciplinary Research.

Notes on contributors

Mette Mortensen

Mette Mortensen (corresponding author) is Associate Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Hans-Jörg Trenz

Hans-Jörg Trenz is Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark and Research Professor at ARENA, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]