Through the Artivist Lens: Framing the Works of Sebastião Salgado

The overarching theme of this paper is that of Artivism, a neologism that combines both ‘art’ and ‘activism. Artivism has been highly commended as a novel technique for both artists and activists, and can be used in a variety of different manners. However, within the academic literature there exists a gap, as very little of the existing research has focused on trying to measure the impact of artivist practices. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to see whether it is possible to lay an initial framework that can initiate a discussion on how to create a criterion by which to measure the end results of artivism. This is done by relying on the argument that the more coverage an artivist has, the wider the range of diffusion of their message, and therefore has a higher effect. In order to initiate this discussion, a quantitative frame analysis was applied, as implicit within newspaper coverage is the notion of framing. Within journalistic literature, framing as a technique is known to have the potential to influence people’s thought process, and subsequently the way they perceive certain issues or events. By examining the type of frames used in newspapers, one can begin to theorize about the potential effect these frames have on readers. Therefore, the following research will examine the frames utilized in newspaper coverage on the infamous photographer Sebastião Salgado and his work. It was found that Artist, Subject Matter and Socio-Politico-Economic Frames were the most dominant throughout the data. Therefore, it can be theorized that as these are the frames most used by the newspaper media in order to discuss Salgado and his work, which may imply that they focus on the aesthetics and the content of his photographs, it can be subsequently speculated that readers perceives him in the same fashion.