Den prestigefyllda bildens skådespel : En historisk jämförelse av World Press Photo of the Year

Sammanfattning:

The aim of our study was to examine which news images the media industry choose to reward. The World Press Photo Awards is an anual competition in which a jury of professional photo journalists appoints a winner among over 90 000 contributions. We have studied twelve pictures that have won World Press Photo of the Year over the time span of six decades to explore the characteristics of the winning pictures, but also to give a perspective over time. For the purpose of our study, we took a closer look at the roles of the people in the pictures, as well as the attributes and contexts related to them.

Our findings indicate that myths seem to play a central part in the telling and retelling of stories. The tradgedy of human lives is a reoccurring element, and the people are in most cases depicted in a negative context. The story of the victim, for example, was common in the winning pictures.

We could see that civilians frequently appears in photographs, especially suffering children who often stands as a symbol of weakness. As connected to the mishap of people, our research found similarities to other studies focusing on how news stories speak to our compassion and emotions.