Abstract
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.
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