ABSTRACT
Digital witnessing, the visual engagement with distant suffering through mobile media by means of real-time recording, uploading, and sharing, poses new epistemic challenges in the management of the visibility of conflict death in Western media. At the heart of the epistemic doubt surrounding the 'amateur' footage of conflict death lies the synergy between the proliferation of digital cameras and the implication of civilians in conflict zones. The chapter focuses on three case studies of mediatized death: the beheading of a Western citizen, the death of Gaddafi, and the mass killing of Syrian civilians. The clearest example of 'normalization' is the uneven remediation of the Syrian massacre, where uncertainty about the appropriate affective resonance with this historical event resulted in the suspended humanizations of its victims. The remediation of mediatized death relies upon emotion as a key site for its politics of authenticity.
