The Abu Ghraib torture photographs

Abstract

Drawing on a close analysis of how the Abu Ghraib photographs originally were perceived and framed in the American news media, public debate, and in various cultural contexts, this article addresses the question of how iconic news media images exercise power in the shaping of news, politics, and public opinion. It specifically takes issue with the tendency among prominent communication scholars to assume that visuals mainly function to support dominant news frames and elite political discourse with little or no potential for independent influence on audiences. The key conclusion of the article is that the Abu Ghraib photographs were not in any simple way `spoken for' or tamed by the dominant news frames, but quite the opposite. The photographs have themselves come to function as a critical prism through which elite and popular views on US foreign policy are refracted, in the sense that the heretofore banned sight of American troops in the role of sadistic torturers has become an integral part of our understanding of the Bush administration's `war on terror'. The impact of these photographs is not least suggested by their proliferation in the wider culture, where they, through various creative and counter-framing practices, often have been transformed into sites of protest and opposition to the very deeds they represent.