Researching Graphic Content from Conflict Zones

Holly Steel is presenting a paper at the International Visual Methods Conference in Brighton in Sept 2015. She will be sharing work drawn from her thesis by exploring 'Violence on a Loop: The ethics of researching graphic content from conflict zones'

Holly draws on her experience researching YouTube videos arising from the August 21st chemical attack in Syria, to explore the issues faced by researchers conducting visual analyses of graphic user-generated content (UGC). These glimpses of the conflict are often graphic, and include bodies in pain, those who are dying and those who are dead. Exposure to such content is increasingly part of journalistic labour. The issues faced by journalists in managing exposure to graphic content are echoed in the work of the researcher, who not only has to manage their own exposure to graphic content but navigate the ways in which these pieces of content are ethically presented within academic work. 

She suggests that issues faced by researchers, are:

1) ethical duty towards those within the frame; 

2) the ethics of reproduction;

3) vicarious trauma.

New Video - Criminology at the University of York

The Sociology Department has had a new short animated film made to help you get some more insight into what it is like to study criminology at the University of York. This is not just for our BA Criminology applicants but also for those interested in the Sociology with Criminology route. The film gives you an idea of the sorts of topics that come up within our various modules and also gives you a taste of what the academics who teach the degree programme are interested in.

The video is online at: http://youtu.be/dpW-RiSyVqs