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Purpose: This project examines both the media practice of covering perp walks and the discourse of perp walks as performative rituals, with the goal of understanding how grounded practice shapes meaning.

Methodology/approach: This project combines ethnographic observation and interview research to explore the grounded experience of perp walk participants, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants.

Findings: The analysis suggests that perp walks are constructions that serve the interests of the state and that their resulting images are not neutral documents. Visual journalists are managed by law enforcement through embodied gatekeeping in practice and experience pressure from newsrooms to capture a particular moment. Defendants report feeling violated because they are unable to control the discourse of their recontextualized image.

Research limitations: As a qualitative-research project using a non-representative sample, the study results cannot be generalized, but they instead offer a rich understanding of embodied practice.

Originality/value: Because this study offers the subjective perspectives of three sets of stakeholders, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants, it offers a unique and in-depth analysis of perp walks as media ritual.

This study examines three significant collaborative journalism projects in the Americas: The Panama Papers, from the United States-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ); “América Latina, Región de Carteles,” by Colombian-based Connectas; and the first phase of the Brazilian-based project, Comprova, supported by Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalists (Abraji) and First Draft. The work investigates what encompasses collaborative journalism; and explores whether it is a recent phenomenon of the news ecosystem, a consequence of the institutional crisis of journalism, and if it is influenced by a network-based and platformed society. A mixed-method approach is applied in a three-stage analysis: (1) desk research; (2) quantitative content analysis; and (3) qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews. To gain a broader picture of the organizations and their respective projects, documental and bibliographical research was carried out with a focus on data from press releases, corporate reports, and articles published on the websites of the organizations coordinating the projects. Furthermore, a quantitative content analysis of 10 news articles published by each of these collaboration partnerships was completed. Finally, qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the directors, managers, and professional journalists’ part of the organizations and project. This study emphasizes the importance of collaborative practices, demonstrates how collaborative practices contribute to a new modus operandi of the news ecosystem; and considers why journalists and media organizations have turned to collaborative journalism as a model of production, circulation, and distribution of journalistic investigations.

Purpose: This chapter presents some results of a research project on the new modes of production of television crime news in Argentina. The authors explore the creation of content regarding crime in television newscasts, focusing on the ways of accessing the sources, circulation of information, and exhibition strategies.

Methodology/approach: The enquiry involved interviews with news workers and observations in nine stations in Buenos Aires City. The authors describe the routines in the production of television crime news in Argentina, the ways of narrating and enunciating crime news on television, the role played by the police in the structure of the news, and the emergence of new sources of information.

Findings: The authors outline three main findings: Most of the newscasts on television give prominence to crime news within their agendas since producers understand that this kind of information is attractive for the public; the authors observe that the way crime news is told defines the interpretive frame transmitted to viewers; and the authors describe how, in recent years, the production and presentation of crime news have changed as a result of the spread of digital technologies as sources of information.

Research limitations: First, the study was conducted in just one country. Second, it does not specifically explore why the criteria of newsworthiness as described in the chapter are used. This question can only be explored by looking closely at the experiences of the actors in their sociohistorical context; therefore, a cultural study would need to look in depth at the historic characteristics of the security forces in Argentina and their relation with the press. Finally, a study on viewers’ opinions is needed in order to understand their interpretation of crime news in terms of meaning.

Originality/value: The value of the study is to visualize the cultural specificities of the local newsmakers to understand the way they produce crime news. Whereas the study undoubtedly shares similar characteristics with news production in other countries, it focuses on the specific environment of local newsmakers and shows how the press experiences and visualizes crime and fear of crime in Argentina.

This book contributes to the current academic discussion on school shootings by analysing this contemporary phenomenon in a broader context of media saturation in contemporary social and cultural life. We argue that in order to understand school shootings as a cultural and sociological phenomenon, we need to analyse this type of public violence from a variety of academic perspectives. By drawing on a range of empirical analyses of different school shooting incidents in the United States, Germany, Finland, and Canada, the authors in this volume demonstrate the diverse ways in which the media and school shootings are connected in contemporary society. Numerous frameworks are applied in these original analyses, including media violence, journalism, visual culture, and social networking. Our shared goal is to understand the complex interplay between media, society and school shootings, and certainly how this interaction is carried out in a range of cultural and societal contexts and settings.

Purpose – This chapter analyzes the visual coverage of amok school shootings with the aim of tracing particular patterns of visualization relating to the representation of victimizers and victims.

Methodology – Based on a qualitative mixed-method design combining visual content with visual context analysis of print and online coverage of the incidents, a tentative typology is developed to be tested in future empirical studies. The exploratory study builds on empirical data derived both from print and online coverage of two amok rampage incidents in Germany (Winnenden/Wendlingen, March 2009; Ansbach, September 2009). For comparative reasons the online visual coverage of three amok school shootings in the United States (Littleton, 1999; Red Lake, 2005; Blacksburg, 2007), two in Finland (Tuusula, 2007; Kauhajoki, 2008), as well as two additional cases in Germany (Erfurt, 2002; Emsdetten, 2006) were included in the sample.

Findings – A typology of mainly press photographs about amok school shootings with three main categories – visuals portraying the perpetrator(s), visuals portraying the victims, and visuals about the context. For each of the three main categories there are several subcategories. However, quality media focus on context visuals while tabloid media focus on the perpetrator, and sometimes on the victims. Additionally, a clear distinction between print and online media emerged, with quality print media adhering more strictly to privacy laws than both tabloid and quality online sites.

Research limitations – Different samples of amok events; only one with a full sampling of both print and online newspapers and magazines; TV coverage not taken into account.

Practical implications – Heightened media attention and the pervasive need of media to visualize violent events underscore the relevance of empirically based guidelines for photojournalists and editors alike. The results of this study are a first step in this direction.

Originality – The chapter contributes to visual communication research insofar as it presents a first theoretical and methodological approach to operationalize visuals in the context of reporting about a particular type of violent event.

In order to discuss visual truth both from the epistemological and ethical perspective, this essay focuses on the nature of photographic image and its complex relationship with human perception and ethics in Western culture. It argues that this relationship is similarly complex to that of history and reality it represents and points out that the ethical approach to truth is most constructive for society. By looking at the most politically, ethically, and ideologically engaged category: war photography, the author analyzes how images are constructed and used in various contexts. The text provides a background of history of war iconography but focuses on the examples from the twentieth and twenty-first century: the Vietnam War, the Balkan conflict, the war in the Persian Gulf, the war in Iraq, and the war in Syria.