ABSTRACT
Two overall forms of contemporary witnessing were presented in chapter 1: the first-hand witnessing of the bystander or participant, and the secondhand witnessing of the media audience. In the current media landscape, the two are interrelated. When eyewitness images gain momentum as the main sources of information in the coverage of topical events, they situate distant audiences as witnesses by proxy. Situations thus still more frequently occur in which ‘the witness (speech-act) of the witness (person) was witnessed (by an audience)’, to borrow the words of John Durham Peters (2001, 709).
