ABSTRACT

Few studies have focused on visual representation of crime-related events in news images across national contexts. In this study, eighty-three news images from two hundred Iranian and Dutch news articles published in national newspapers were qualitatively analyzed. These images were scrutinized for their use of semiotic strategies as well as the overall visual pattern. The findings showed few similarities and notable differences between news images in the two cultural contexts. The Visual Pattern Analysis led to identification of six visual framing patterns. While Iranian images focus on non-identifiable arrested criminals, Dutch images frame crime in terms of identifiable victims and crime location. Remarkably, crime is rarely framed in terms of social causes and solutions in either corpus. The discussion links the findings to the socio-cultural contexts in which images are produced and received. The visual discourse analysis raised questions about the production and reception of crime news images to be investigated in future studies.

摘要

很少有研究关注跨国家背景的新闻图像中犯罪相关事件的视觉表现。在这项研究中，对全国报纸上发表的 200 篇伊朗和荷兰新闻文章中的 83 张新闻图像进行了定性分析。这些图像对其符号学策略的使用以及整体视觉模式进行了仔细检查。研究结果显示，两种文化背景下的新闻图像几乎没有相似之处，但存在显着差异。视觉模式分析识别出六种视觉框架模式。伊朗图像侧重于无法识别的被捕罪犯，而荷兰图像则根据可识别的受害者和犯罪地点来框定犯罪。值得注意的是，在这两个语料库中，很少根据社会原因和解决方案来界定犯罪。讨论将研究结果与图像产生和接收的社会文化背景联系起来。视觉话语分析提出了有关犯罪新闻图像的制作和接收的问题，需要在未来的研究中进行调查。