<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This study marks a shift in research focus from verbal to visual aspects in crisis communication and contributes to the emerging field of visual crisis communication by exploring the use of images in the Scandinavian press when reporting on and/or commemorating a disaster. We used rhetorical arena theory (RAT) and a social semiotic approach to visual analysis to investigate how fifteen newspapers from Sweden, Norway and Denmark visualised the MS Estonia disaster ten, fifteen and twenty years after the sinking of the ship. We examined 93 images published on the anniversaries in 2004, 2009 and 2014 to determine what kinds of images accompanied the press reports and how these changed over time. The results demonstrate that the images, which changed considerably over time, represented the disaster both as an irreversible loss and as a process with a strong symbolic value.</p></abstract>

This study marks a shift in research focus from verbal to visual aspects in crisis communication and contributes to the emerging field of visual crisis communication by exploring the use of images in the Scandinavian press when reporting on and/or commemorating a disaster. We used rhetorical arena theory (RAT) and a social semiotic approach to visual analysis to investigate how fifteen newspapers from Sweden, Norway and Denmark visualised the MS Estonia disaster ten, fifteen and twenty years after the sinking of the ship. We examined 93 images published on the anniversaries in 2004, 2009 and 2014 to determine what kinds of images accompanied the press reports and how these changed over time. The results demonstrate that the images, which changed considerably over time, represented the disaster both as an irreversible loss and as a process with a strong symbolic value.

Visual Crisis Communication in the Scandinavian Press

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Images of the MS Estonia disaster

This study marks a shift in research focus from verbal to visual aspects in crisis communication and contributes to the emerging field of visual crisis...

Visual Crisis Communication in the Scandinavian Press

Published Online: Oct 25, 2019

Page range: 91 - 109

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0035

Keywords
crisis communication, rhetorical arena theory, Scandinavian press, social semiotics, visual communication

© 2019 Maier, C. D., Frandsen, F. & Johansen, W. published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Visual Crisis Communication in the Scandinavian Press

Published Online: Oct 25, 2019

Page range: 91 - 109

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0035

Keywordscrisis communication, rhetorical arena theory, Scandinavian press, social semiotics, visual communication

© 2019 Maier, C. D., Frandsen, F. & Johansen, W. published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
crisis communication, rhetorical arena theory, Scandinavian press, social semiotics, visual communication