‘Writing’ oneself into tragedy: visual user practices and spectatorship of the Alan Kurdi images on Instagram

Studies into affective publics often involve textual communication. However, emotive communication is increasingly visual. This study zooms in on the representation of the suffering other in seven re-workings of the Alan Kurdi photographs that resonated significantly on Instagram. Chouliaraki’s concept of post-humanitarian solidarity in The Ironic Spectator (2013) is used as a theoretical framework to analyse the content of re-worked images and...