Attempts and tools to substantiate verbal and visual accounts of violence

Impeded access to recollection of violence

Coordination : Anna Krykun, Emmanuelle Käes, Roxana Ilasca et Liudmyla Harmash (chercheuse invitée LE STUDIUM 2025-26 au sein de l’UR ICD)
 

• Merja Ellefson (Örebro University, Media and Communication Science): “War, journalism, and propaganda”

The Crimean War in the 1850s was the first mediated war, made possible by the telegraph and the first war correspondents. As Knightly (1982) puts it, the first casualty in a war is the truth. Digitalization has further blurred the difference between news, news commentary, and propaganda. Content is created and shared not only by news media but also by military bloggers, soldiers, volunteers assisting the troops, and the public. How do we navigate this new media landscape?

Suggested reading: Andrew Hoskins and Pavel Shchelin, ‘The War Feed. Digital War in Plain Sight’ (2023).

Senior Lecturer at Örebro University, Merja Ellefson has previously worked at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication of Stockholm University and the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Umeå University. In 2018, she was a Winner of Pedagogical Prize for her courses in press history and critical theory. Her research interests include the questions related to nationalism and construction of ethnic majorities and minorities, mediated memories and minority media.
 

• Giuseppina Albano (University of Salerno, Mathematics): “Statistics as narrative devices in media representations of violence”

This talk examines how statistics are used in media accounts of organised violence. It focuses on numbers, percentages and trends as tools that help substantiate verbal and visual narratives in the public sphere. Drawing on Theodore Porter’s analysis of quantification as a form of objectivity, the presentation considers statistics not only as information, but also as devices that produce credibility and authority. By looking at how individual testimonies are translated into quantitative forms, it discusses how media representations shape collective understanding of violent events. Through selected examples, the talk reflects on what becomes visible, simplified or marginal when violence is framed through numbers, and on the implications of quantitative formats for testimony, memory and public discourse.

Suggested reading: Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers the Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (1995) - p. 3-32.

Giuseppina Albano is Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Salerno. She holds a PhD in Mathematics and her research focuses on statistical inference and stochastic processes, with applications in biostatistics, economics and social sciences. She teaches statistics and data analysis at undergraduate and PhD level and has extensive experience in interdisciplinary research and doctoral training.
 

• Maria Nilsson, Alexa Robertson, Joy Kibarabara and Elsa Gomis (Stockholm University, Media Studies): “Beyond headlines: narrative and situated responses to the erosion of democracy”

This talk is about a project that examines how testimony operates as a narrative device in mass media across local, regional, and global contexts. Focusing on resistance to ICE deportations in Portland, constructive journalism practices in Africa, and the global circulation of migration narratives through Netflix content, it analyses how testimonial voices are structured, legitimised, and constrained in the public sphere. It asks how media formats shape what can be said, believed, or felt through testimonial storytelling, and how these formats privilege efficiency, clarity, and emotional impact over narrative robustness. Our talk explores alternative practices that write after or against dominant testimonial forms, including co-creative journalism and serial fiction. It argues that such practices foster robust forms of communication that embrace uncertainty, plurality, and relationality, enabling narrative resistance that sustains trust, agency, and democratic imagination across media scales.
Suggested reading: Alexa Robertson, Screening Protest. Visual Narratives of Dissent Across Time, Space and Genre (2019) - p. 1-18, 166-189.

Maria Nilsson is Professor of Journalism Studies in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University, with previous faculty appointments at the University of Iowa (PhD in Communication Studies and MFA. in Nonfiction Writing), Uppsala University and Mid Sweden University. Her research interests, with visual communication and in particular photography as a near-constant focus, include with studies into photojournalism and editorial processes, news photography and ethics, citizen eye-witnessing in the news, and media representation of migration. Her most recent project, which explored how news outlets handled fact checking and the ethical dimensions of conflict images, was published in the Routledge monograph, Visual Journalism and Verification at War: Norwegian and Swedish News Outlets Covering Ukraine (2025). Her research has also appeared in international peer-reviewed journals, including Journalism, Journalism Practice, Nordicom Review, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Imaginations, as well as in anthologies, most recently contributing to The Routledge Handbook to Visual Journalism (Dahmen & Thomson, eds.).

Alexa Robertson is Professor of Media and Communication at Stockholm University and holds a PhD in Political Science, an MA and BA in History and a BA in Archaeology. Her books include Screening Politics (Routledge, 2018), Media and Politics in a Globalized World (Polity, 2015), Global News: Reporting Conflicts and Cosmopolitanism (Peter Lang 2015), and Mediated Cosmopolitanism: the world of television news (Polity 2010). She teaches courses at the Masters level on global media studies, media and politics, politics and popular culture and research design.

Joy Kibarabara currently holds a research affiliation at the department of media studies, Stockholm University. Her research focuses on socially responsible journalistic practices, such as constructive journalism, exploring how such practices can strengthen democracy, and shift the focus from conflict-only reporting to more nuanced solutions oriented reporting. Joy's research and pedagogical experience span three continents-Africa, North America and Europe, cutting across journalism, media and communication. Joy's research has been published in leading academic journals. Presently, she serves as a theme committee member for this year's Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference to be held in Cape Town, South Africa. Parallel, Joy Kibarabara acts as the convener and part of the local organizing committee for ICA-Kenya Regional Hub conference.

Elsa Gomis is a researcher and filmmaker working at the intersection of film theory, artistic research and migration studies. She holds a Critical PhD by Practice from the University of East Anglia and has conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford. Her research explores how border regimes influence visibility and transform the conditions under which images are created. Combining theoretical inquiry with filmmaking practices, she develops ethically grounded methodologies that engage with representations of migration and spatial governance. Her films and research projects have been presented in academic and cultural contexts, including the Collège de France, the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, and the Immigration Initiative at Harvard University. Her feature documentary The People Behind the Scenes is included in the collection of the Neuchâtel Ethnography Museum.