Photojournalism has been an important aspect of reporting social trauma since at least the American Civil War (1861–65), bringing the horrors of conflict “into the living-rooms” of homes across the world. Based on the photographs of two Syrian refugee children, Aylan Kurdi (“the boy on the beach”) and Omran Daqneesh (“the Aleppo boy in the ambulance”) the present research suggests that photographs of children in conflict are particularly memorable across different cultures: through their appeal to empathy they are able to resonate with viewers in a very direct way. Each of these photos has been widely reproduced in newspapers and on television worldwide. The photos acquired iconic status, published, forwarded and repeated in a plethora of media, including in the recent cases vast exposure on social media.

至少从美国南北战争（1861-65年）开始，新闻摄影就一直是报道社会创伤的重要方面，这将冲突的恐怖带入了世界各地房屋的起居室。基于两个叙利亚难民儿童的照片，艾伦·库尔迪（Aylan Kurdi，“海滩上的男孩”）和奥姆兰·达克涅什（Omran Daqneesh，“救护车中的阿勒颇男孩”），本研究表明，冲突中的儿童的照片在不同文化中尤其令人难忘：通过诉诸同理心，他们可以以非常直接的方式与观众产生共鸣。这些照片中的每一张都已在世界各地的报纸和电视上广泛复制。这些照片获得了标志性的地位，在众多媒体上进行了发布，转发和重复，包括在最近的案例中在社交媒体上的大量曝光。