Abstract
This article aims to contribute on reflecting about the strict relation between an object (an image) and the memory, particularly regarding the memory in the news on September 2nd 2015 about the refugee crisis. Every year, Porto Editora (a Portuguese press company) holds a survey with ten words in order to elect the word of the year, and, for 2015, the elected one was “Refugees” (Palavra do Ano, 2015); this would be one more evidence of the impact of this issue in the news. The photo of a dead Syrian child on a beach in Turkey has become one of the most striking images of the refugee crisis in 2015. Curiously, Muerte a las puertas del paraíso (Death on paradise’s gates) was the headline exactly fifteen years ago, on September 2nd 2000, when photojournalist Javier Bauluz caught the image of a dead immigrant who tried to cross illegally, facing down the sand on a beach in Spain. In both cases, could we say the image overcomes the news? Which one is to be considered the object of the memory: the refugee crisis itself or the image of the dead Syrian child as an icon of this crisis? The theoretical framework stands on a threefold argument: 1. Object, memory and discourse; 2. The memory of the news; 3. Europe, migration and refugee crisis. Finally, two interviews were undertaken (as part of the pilot study) in order to verify if the memory of the object were sufficient enough to turn it into the object of the memory, as well as, whether one’s memory were somehow relevant to establish a collective memory.
Highlights
Objects come to life and are given meaning in the memory itself, in a network of information in permanent symbolic transformation16. Calvino (2009, p. 23) says that “Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist”, in other words, the city begins to exist in one’s memory from the repetition of symbolic signs that give shape and meaning to that memory
Could we say the image overcomes the news? Which one is to be considered the object of the memory: the refugee crisis itself or the image of the dead Syrian child as an icon of this crisis? The theoretical framework stands on a threefold argument: 1
In order to observe the importance of an image for the memory of the news, the questions addressed to three dimensions: 1. “Contact with information”, which meant to put context to the access and contact with the information in the news; 2
Summary
But it is society that builds your memory on them. The relevance of the narrated episodes is totally dependent on the public, the viewer who watches the narrative and appropriates the message, but “The way information is disclosed - through verbal or visual language - interfere with its powers of meanings and possible interpretations” (Ayoub, Ayoub, & Oliveira, 2012, p. 16). If before people gathered around a radio or a person who was reading a newspaper to those who could not read, under an increasing number of readers and technological resources, you can read the newspaper on your phone, smart TVs, computer, iPad/tablet or even your watch Faced with this massive coverage of exposure opportunities to the news, an individual can be more affected by the news of a tragedy than twenty years ago, or not. A reported tragedy does not end its transmission when we turn off the communicator channel (newspaper, radio, TV, etc.) because we can come across a second individual narrative, which have been impacted by the news elect as theme his speech. Reporting a tragedy is not something that evades journalistic ethics, perhaps inflating the news is directly related to the ethics of the viewer In this way, we should ask ourselves if we are really being ethical in perpetuating the memory of the tragedy. 23 Free translation: “Expressar, para o sujeito falante, é tomar consciência; ele não expressa somente para os outros, expressa para saber ele mesmo o que visa.”
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