This study uses news photographs and interviews with journalists to explore how Australia’s unprecedented 2019–2020 bushfire season was depicted for Australian and non-Australian audiences in order to extend transnational understanding of iconicity’s tenets and how news values vary across contexts. It does so first by examining the Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage over 3 months and then by contrasting this with international coverage that began in early 2020 once the issue spilled onto the world stage. Australia’s coverage focused intensely on human actors involved in the disaster while the vast numbers of affected animals were virtually absent. In contrast, international media visually depicted the disaster as an environmental and ecological issue with global consequences. The results suggest a need for a definition of iconicity that is inclusive to non-human actors and to inanimate forces that are personified. It also extends our cross-cultural understanding of the visual expression of news values.

这项研究使用新闻照片和对记者的采访，探讨了如何为澳大利亚和非澳大利亚观众描绘澳大利亚前所未有的2019–2020丛林大火季节，以便扩展跨国界对标志性宗旨的理解，以及新闻价值在不同背景下的变化。它首先通过检查《悉尼先驱晨报》来做到这一点。报道覆盖了3个月，然后与2020年初开始的国际报道形成鲜明对比，国际报道开始蔓延至世界舞台。澳大利亚的报道主要集中在参与这场灾难的人类行为者上，而实际上却没有大量受影响的动物。相反，国际媒体在视觉上将这场灾难描述为具有全球后果的环境和生态问题。结果表明，需要对非人类行为者和拟人化的无生命力量具有包容性的定义。它还扩展了我们对新闻价值视觉表达的跨文化理解。