PHOTOJOURNALISM ACROSS CULTURES

This chapter explores how news images and photojournalism practices may be unique across different countries and cultures, even as denotative properties of images have been regarded as universal. As an example, the way the U.S. news media visually depicted the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath was radically different from Arab media's visual coverage, as journalistic practices cannot be totally free from the political environment in which they operate. Furthermore, specific photojournalistic practices for visually documenting reality can be culturally specific. The first section of this chapter examines visual framing using a comparative perspective, which leads to a discussion of the roles of photojournalism in the Global North and South. The second part of the chapter sheds light on specific cases of unique photojournalistic practices across cultures.