Abu Ghraib Revisited: News Narratives, Visual Culture, and the Power of Photography.

Drawing on a close analysis of how the Abu Ghraib photographs originally were framed in the American news media, public debate and in popular cultural contexts, this paper addresses the question of how news media images exert power in the shaping of news, politics, and public opinion. Specifically, it takes issue with the scholarly tendency to foreclose any inquiry into the workings of news media images with presuppositions that such images mainly play the passive role of illustrations to dominant news frames and official political discourse, with little or no potential for independent influence on members of the audience. The paper argues instead that the relationship between visuals and news narratives not seldom is a ’high-tension’ one, and that images which contradict or disrupt a dominant discursive frame might have a considerable impact, if not directly on politics and policy making, then more so on popular imagination and historical consciousness. Even if the Abu Ghraib photographs in a short-term perspective had minimal political or policy repercussions, they nevertheless dealt a fatal blow to the United States’ mission in Iraq. Not only were these photographs bound to alienate much of the Arab world, but also, in a long-term perspective, to percolate into the mind of Americans, and to create their own autonomous frame of reference in the sense that the heretofore banned sight of American soldiers in the role of sadistic dominators has become an integral part of our understanding of the US war on terror. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]