News Images as Lived Images: Media Ritual, Cultural Performance, and Public Trauma

The Muslims Next Door: Transgressive Hybridity in TLC'sAll-American Muslim

“…It is also consistent with recent studies (Coonfield & Huxford, 2009;de B'béri & Hogarth, 2009) combining analysis of media commentaries with interpretive analysis of media content.…”

Racializing Pity: The Haiti Earthquake and the Plight of “Others”

“…If we view victims as an Other, we tend to show pity: an emotion that places some distance between the subject and the object. As Coonfield and Huxford (2009) point out, our emotive responses to mediated tragedies are triggered by 54 M. Balaji cultural performance. As a result, ''news becomes both a cultural storehouse and a stage where the lively possibilities of performance can be held, enacted, contested, even set aside for still other, future use'' (Coonfield & Huxford, 2009. p. 474).…”

“…For example, when terrorist attacks hit Lahore, Pakistan and Mumbai, India, in 2008, cable news networks such as CNN took great pains to emphasize local connections. Otherwise, the attacks*like the ones that take places in irreconcilably Othered places such as Mogadishu, Jaffna, and Jos*become pitiful and do not generate the same emotional response from viewers as those with which they can develop a stronger connection (Coonfield & Huxford, 2009). Perhaps this is why pity*which inherently assumes an inequality in power relations*becomes more socially acceptable than indifference.…”

Visual Images in the Media

“…Similarly it is argued that news images may be translated into 'lived images' during community ritual, being appropriated and reworked in ways that may empower and heal the community. For example, the striking and dramatic news imagery that was a central focus of the attack on the United States in 9/11 later reemerged in new ways in local carnivals and parades, with floats featuring pictures and models of the Twin Towers restored to their former glory (Coonfield and Huxford, 2009). …”