A rapid research response to the death of Aylan Kurdi

Posted on December 18th, 2015 by Helena Taylor

A report has been produced by The Social Media Lab focusing on the images of three-year old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi taken by a Turkish press photographer after his body was found on Bodrum beach in Turkey, 2 September 2015. The report features contributions from the Visual Social Media Lab team, Google News Lab (Simon Rogers), Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University (Claire Wardle), WITNESS (Sam Gregory) as well as both Lin Prøitz and Holly Ryan from the Crick Centre.

It tracks how the images spread on Twitter: from one tweet to 20 million screens in the space of 12 hours. The report shows how these images had a huge impact on language use, with users shifting from the term ‘migrants’ to ‘refugees’ overnight. Moreover, Twitter recently announced that #RefugeesWelcome was one of the most influential moments of 2015 on the platform.

The report shows how Twitter was instrumental in the distribution of these images, making the story go global and mainstream before the official international press published the first news article. Findings from Google News Lab highlight a similar pattern around the increased use of the term ‘refugees’. It also shows how people were already searching for Aylan Kurdi before news started to spread on Twitter.

Why did these images become meaningful? The report draws on the expertise of 15 contributors from the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, industry and nonprofit organisations to address this wider question from different angles, across four sections in the report:

1. Social Media Responds – studies how the image spread on social media and what people searched for on Google. It looks at specific stories and image use.
2. What Did the Image Do? – addresses media coverage of personal, political and artistic responses as well as different political responses in the UK and Norway.
3. The Iconic Image on Social Media – uses longstanding visual traditions (the iconography of suffering, war and press photography) to understand the images.
4. Showing/Not Showing the Image – includes a timely discussion on ethics, publishing decisions for graphic images as well as the changing role of platforms.

The report can be accessed here.

 

Feature image courtesy of Defense Visual Information Centre via Wikimedia Commons. Please note that this is not the image the report focuses on.