War Photojournalism and Violence in Worldwide Photojournalism Contests

This master's thesis researches how often and how worldwide photojournalism competitions award photographs that capture phenomena such as war conflicts, violence, and their consequences. The basis of this research is a hypothesis that shots capturing described phenomena dominate some of the contest categories. The theoretical part contains fundamental information related to the topic of the research - negativity as a news value and the concept of war frame in the journalism field. Peace journalism and solutions journalism have developed to answer to the high rate of negative content in the news, as they do not focus on the negative aspects of events, which presents a different approach to journalistic work. The relation between those two approaches and photojournalism is described in more detail, so is a brief overview of worldwide contests and their influence on the photojournalism field. The research part of the thesis combines content analysis with semiotic analysis and delves into the frequency of awarding described photographs and the content of the photographs, as well as the development in awarding such pictures in time. The research also includes the analysis of several photographs that can be considered a part of peace or solutions journalism. The semiotic analysis then explores such pictures in..