The Visibility of Suffering: War Images, Emotion, and Public Sensibility

Contemporary warfare is increasingly mediated through digital images circulating across global communication networks. Beyond their informational and strategic functions, war images raise a fundamental question: how is human suffering made visible, perceived, and understood through visual representation? Images of violence, destruction, displacement, and death have long shaped public perceptions of war. In the digital age, however, social media, mobile technologies, drones, and user-generated content have transformed the ways suffering is witnessed, shared, and interpreted. War images can generate empathy, solidarity, and political engagement, but their constant circulation may also produce desensitization, emotional fatigue, or indifference. Moreover, not all suffering becomes equally visible. The production, selection, circulation, and suppression of images influence whose pain is publicly recognized and which conflicts remain at the margins of global attention. Images are therefore not simply records of war; they actively shape how violence is understood and experienced. This panel invites contributions that explore the visual politics of suffering in contemporary conflicts and examine the role of images in shaping ethical, emotional, and political responses to war. Contributions may address, among others, the following questions: How do images shape the visibility and perception of suffering in contemporary conflicts? What ethical challenges emerge in the representation of pain, death, and human vulnerability? Does increased visibility of suffering necessarily produce greater empathy and solidarity, or can visual saturation paradoxically lead to emotional detachment, compassion fatigue, and indifference? What role do manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda play in the production and circulation of war images?