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LIAS Interventions: In Media

"Trauma and the Visual in Journalism"

08. Jun

LIAS Interventions is a new series of the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society. In line with the aim of the LIAS to expand options for thought and action, workshops with non-academic actors are organized that are based on the respective research topics. The format enables the fellows to disseminate insights from their research outside the university context.

In line with LIAS's goal of broadening options for thought and action, workshops are organised with non-academic actors, taking the fellows' respective research topics as a starting point and working out common social problems. The format enables the fellows to discuss their content outside the university, and it brings invited actors into an in-depth discussion with the latest research.

The first LIAS Interventions_ In Media was about the research project "The Visual Witnessing of Trauma Phenomena Among Journalists: An Analysis of Various Media Images from East Africa" by Lydia Oumo Radoli. In it, she researches the consequences and conditions of traumatisation of photo and film journalists.

In her study, media scientist and former journalist Lydia Ouma Radoli examines the trauma of journalists in East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda), the structural disadvantages within the media system and asked for an alternative way of dealing with a phenomenon that has hardly been researched in East Africa so far.

Against this background, the many years of experience of the journalist and author Jay Tuck was of central importance, as he was able to report on the actual conditions of reporting from two Gulf wars for the participants of the workshop and showed his own film material on this, which he shot as head of TV teams.

Prof. Levi Obonyo, Dean of the School of Communication, Daystar University, Nairobi, explored the question of which mechanisms within the media systems determine the selection of images (TV, photo) in the context of crisis and war reporting in East Africa and which economic situation determines the media sector in Kenya and thus the working conditions of journalists.

Dr. Gertrud Koch, Professor Emeritus of Film Studies at the Free University of Berlin and Visiting Professor at Brown University,USA, contributed her insights into the dynamics of media and image production. She critically reflected on the current function, role and duties of journalists.

The participating journalists from Germany on the ground and Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda online agreed that journalists' experiences are trivialised. The journalists' accounts of their experiences, the spotlight on their emotions ultimately also led to the conclusion that conversations about their traumatic experiences should be normalised.