Beelden van menselijk leed binnen de Westerse media

Media have several ways of representing images of human suffering. On the one hand they can respond to the emotions of their spectators by showing dramatic and sensational images (Chouliaraki, 2006). On the other hand, media can represent human suffering in a more ‘factual’ way which causes the images and associated texts to invite less compassion or pity on the part of the spectator (Ibid., 2006). This is because media then focus on the event itself and not on the dramatic aspects that are involved (Ibid., 2006). The ways media choose to represent victims are mostly based on dominant ideologies which they carry with them. The West, for example, presents a disaster which is culturally and geographically far distant from them in a different manner than a disaster which is relatively nearby (Sontag, 2003). Human suffering in developing countries which from a Western perspective is far away, is mostly represented by the use of explicit and shocking images (Ibid., 2003). In this research the opposite has been looked at by making use of a Critical Discourse Analysis of the representation of human suffering resulting from a disaster which, from a cultural and geographical perspective, is nearby the country where the publication appears. The manner in which media from a Western country, The Netherlands, report on victims who are from the West as well, in this case from Norway, has been investigated. Lastly the way in which this type of coverage materialised has been looked at. Eventually it turned out that the Dutch media, in this case: NRC Handelsblad, De Volkskrant and Algemeen Dagblad, represented the Norwegian victims in such a way that the images invite a shock effect and strongly respond to the emotions of the Dutch readership. This may be labelled as sensational coverage whereby the images and written texts reinforce each other and emit one single powerful message: what happened here, is dramatic. By using vehement, explicit and aesthetic images, a short camera distance, sensational headlines and captions the media gave an implicit narrative to the audience, to wit: this is how bad the situation is. This manner of representation can be related to what Chouliaraki (2006) calls categorical suffering whereby the media respond to the emotions of their audience. It seems that this may be described as an ecstatic news discourse in the images which is news that leads to a shock effect on the part of the spectator and also brings people closer together, since it is such a catastrophic and exceptional event (Ibid., 2006). The Dutch media have shown how grave the situation was, because it is about victims to whom the Dutch can relate: It could have happened to them as well.