The Boy on the Beach: A Semiotic Reading of Photographs

Abstract

Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs of children in conflict are particularly memorable across different cultures: through their appeal to empathy they are able to resonate with viewers in a very direct way. Each of these photos has been widely reproduced in newspapers and on television worldwide. The photos acquired iconic status, published, forwarded and repeated in a plethora of media, including in the recent cases vast exposure on social media.

NOTES

Notes

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVSei5wFEZ0.

2 Know your Meme: #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (Noble 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ruth Teer-Tomaselli

Ruth Teer-Tomaselli is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Communications and Media in South Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where she holds the UNESCO Chair of Communication. Her research interests include broadcast media, public service broadcasting, broadcasting history, new technologies of broadcasting and audio-visual content streaming and news and drama on radio and television. Other research interests include political economy and globalisation of media, memorialisation and photography. She is an avid reader of crime fiction, and grows bonsai trees for pleasure. E-mail: [email protected]