Prof. Zelizer discusses haunting images of famine

Barbie Zelizer, Ph.D.

Barbie Zelizer, Ph.D., the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, spoke with the BBC radio program PRI’s The World about the disturbing images of a young famine victim in the Sunday that appeared in the August 2 edition of The New York Times. “These people have no names, they have not identities,” said Prof. Zelizer, “and we don’t know actually if the people we’re looking at are dying or if they are already dead by the time we look at the pictures.” 
 

Prof. Zelizer, author of About to Die: How News Images Move the Public (Oxford 2010), explains in the interview how the power of the image is not in what happened, but what will or may continue to happen.