Visual Content Analysis of Victimhood in Conflicts in Kashmir and Yemen

Abstract

This study reports the findings of a visual content analysis of 141 photographs of victims in Kashmir and Yemen conflicts. These photographs were selected from two Pakistani English Newspapers, “Dawn” and “The Express Tribune” from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019. By applying Framing Theory, this quantitative study analyzed the similarities and differences of the visual reporting of victims between the two conflicts as well as between the selected newspapers. Census Approach was used for the sampling procedure where the whole population was the sample. It was found that as the two conflicts are two different geopolitical situations, Kashmiri victims are predominantly humanized as compared to Yemeni victims in the Pakistani newspapers. It was also depicted through the camera angles that Kashmiri victims received more Close-up and Medium shots, which implies humanization, as compared to Yemeni victims, who received more Long shots depicting them through dehumanization frame. The same study in terms of gender concluded that the ‘male’ gender received more coverage in Yemen conflict as compared to the Kashmir conflict suggesting that news media portrays men to depict violence, whereas women are portrayed to generate audience’s sympathies. The commonality found in the two newspapers was the reporting of violent events more frequently than any other topics studied through this research. Shahira Fahmy’s ‘graphic device’ was applied and it was found that Kashmiri victims were framed under ‘very graphic’ to show a stronger human connection of audience with the victims as compared to Yemenis, who were portrayed through ‘graphic’ frame.