ABSTRACT
A new era of conflict reporting has emerged since the dawn of the millennium. As a result of easily accessible digital technologies and omnipresent camera phones, formerly unobtainable images are produced and distributed on a massive scale across platforms. Some of the past years’ most widely disseminated, most debated, and most conspicuous images have been created and publicized by eyewitnesses. They include footage of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the abuse of inmates in the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, the bombings in London in 2005, and the hanging of Saddam Hussein in 2006. During the past years’ citizen uprisings in a number of countries, eyewitness images have served to communicate protest initiatives and to inform about violence and other misuse of authority by those in power. Eyewitness images have gained the world’s attention on many occasions—for example, when Burmese monks took to the streets in protest against the military regime in 2007 and two years later during the post-election rebellion in Iran. Media coverage of dissent movements across Northern African and Middle Eastern countries from 2011 have also routinely featured images taken by citizens and activists, including video footage of the capture and killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Examples are legion.
