ABSTRACT
The advent of visual technologies and digital media has elevated the status of images as an important platform for studying human rights. Focusing on eyewitness video as an increasingly central vehicle through which human rights claims are made public, this article maps out (1) how human rights organizations utilize eyewitness video as an investigative tool in their advocacy work, (2) how eyewitness video configures within global news crises coverage, and (3) how eyewitness footage operates as a form of legal evidence in courtrooms. In doing so, the article proposes a conceptual framework that accommodates the unfolding role of eyewitness video at the crossroad of the cultural, political, and legal mechanisms that together ferret out human rights violations. The article also suggests that new developments in ethnography provide fruitful methodological grounds for studying the relationship between visual media and human rights from within the institutional networks that render images meaningful.
