George Floyd’s brutal arrest and death provoked massive demonstrations again racism and police brutality all over the world. The use of lethal force by police officers in the USA (and worldwide) is not a secret for most of us. According to different statistics, each year in the USA dozens are, unfortunately, killed by the police, and black people have more chance to be in this macabre list. With no intention of diminishing its importance, it seems relevant to question what made Floyd’s case particular which led to considerable outcry in the USA and beyond its frontiers?
The images of agonising George Floyd have appeared in the national and international media, as well as in social media. This is not the case for many other cases of police brutality, which still have been reported in official documents and in the media. This invites us to reflect on the power of the image or visual material in comparison to the information that we receive in textual format. The images have a huge capacity to bring the risks, which are far from our daily experience, closer to the subjective experience.* The audience absorbs instantly the images without having to analyse or deconstruct it, while it is not the case with textual messages. Images are easy to circulate and they require less time to assimilate the information that it contains.
George Floyd’s case is not a unique example from this point of view. Let’s remember the public reaction to terrorist attacks against French magazine Charlie Hebdo, when the images of terrorists shocked the world. The assassination of Jacque Hamel, a French priest, by terrorists in 2016 that people could only read on newspapers did not, however, lead to a comparable outcry. Another example, the photo of 3 year-old Aylan, kid of a migrant family drowned in the Mediterranean Sea provoked vivid reactions worldwide, while media have continuously been reporting about migrants massively dying during their journey towards Europe before the incident.
The power of provoking emotions makes it an efficient tool for engagement (or disengagement). Marketing specialists understood it long time ago. Hardly we can find a textual commercial. Is it also case for politicians? Supposedly, yes. It is not about a communication strategy or political advertising, but the arbitrary choice whether to disseminate or to turn the eyes away from a given event. Wouldn’t be interesting to question why, for example, the images of war in Yemen and Libya are scarce, while those of Syria are abundant? Didn’t the American public opinion turn against US’s military presence in Vietnam after terrible photos of napalm kid?
It is also important to bear in mind that, never in the history of mankind, dissemination and manipulation of images have been so easy, as it is today. Manipulating public opinion is no longer an exclusive skill of powerful people, but now also of ordinary citizen.
*Boholm, A., « Visual images and risk messages: commemorating Chernobyl », Risk, Decision & Policy, 3(2), 1998, pp. 125-143 (p. 127)
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