How images shape our response to humanitarian crises

Professor Roland Bleiker, Professor David Campbell and Dr Emma Hutchison

This project is supported by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council (2011-2014).

This research will enable better understanding of how images, and the emotions they generate, shape responses to humanitarian crises. Scholars largely recognize that images play a key role in communicating catastrophic events to distant audiences, but we still lack a precise understanding of various important issues involved, including why we react differently to different humanitarian crises. By comparing media representations of a genocide, natural catastrophe, refugee crises and pandemic, our project offers both scholarly and policy-relevant insight about how exactly images procure a willingness to alleviate human suffering and how they can actively be used to enhance Australia's humanitarian commitment to the global community.

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