Den Humanitära Katastrofen i Tigray - En visuell diskursanalys av svenska dagstidningars framställningar av lidande långt bort.

Sammanfattning: The civil war in Ethiopia between the regime and the province of Tigray has for approximately two years displaced people and an extensive famine has hit the region as a result of the conflict (FN 2021). The conflict was enforced during a time period of several humanitarian crises and pandemics around the world, meanwhile a new war in Europe is taking place (BBC 2022). These events have been exposed and observed in the media in a time where images have gained an increasingly rapid spread and greater influence in the political debate. This study is based on an visual discourse analysis of Sweden's two biggest newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter and how they depict the conflict in Ethiopia. The thesis’s methodological starting point has been inspired by Lene Hansen’s approach and starting point of a visual discourse analysis. The study reveals that the conflict is considered a "humanitarian disaster" due to the consequences of the devastating famine that Tigray was left in during and after the conflict. By combining a visual discourse analysis and Lilie Chouliaraki's theoretical starting point "Distant Suffering", the analysis also clarifies how the news media shape and construct the news articles in the form of creating compassion and commitment to the people suffering in the conflict.