A one-day symposium on key issues of contemporary war reporting.
Organised by Johana Kotišová, Lonneke van der Velden, and Truth Hounds.
The ways in which people around the world witness, document, investigate, and – ultimately – wage wars have changed. Media are increasingly embedded in the logic of warfare; everyone is potentially involved in a war through digital forms of documentation and affective media practices. Emergent means and methods of warfare, and the ubiquity of war-related (mis)information and images require new, ever-evolving investigative methods, as well as new approaches to the protection of media workers in fields. These digitally multiplied and continuously innovated methods of investigations invite a variety of actors – journalists, human rights activists, academic researchers, criminal and legal professionals – to gather evidence and establish facts, thus also assuming an active role in how wars and related atrocities are justified, remembered, condemned, and argued before international courts. Researchers, journalists, and legal professionals rely on combinations of digital open-source investigations, increasingly integral to war reporting, and on-the-ground fact-finding work, while being under attack themselves.
This one-day conference addresses selected methodological, ethical, and safety-related changes and challenges to media and human rights (digital) investigations of contemporary warfare. The program involves a series of a panel discussion and two practical workshops on the role of war reporters and security threats they face, open-source investigations into new means and methods of warfare, and the methodology and ethics of interviewing war crime survivors. The conference focuses on trends observed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israeli war in Gaza, which serve as indicators of the contemporary configuration of mediatized warfare.
Program
10.00 – 11.30
Panel discussion
Journalists as the target: Attacks on media workers and safety issues stemming from the changing position of journalists in contemporary conflicts
Speakers: Roman Koval (moderator), Oksana Romaniuk (speaker on Ukraine), Aziza Nofal (TBC, speaker on Palestine)
11.30 – 13.00
Lunch
13.00 – 14.30
Workshop 1
Open-source investigations in media and human rights research of new means and methods of warfare / combination of practical tools and case studies
Speakers: Guillén Torres (Berkeley Human Rights Center), Bohdan Kosokhatko (Truth Hounds)
14.30 – 15.00
Coffee break
15.00 – 16.30
Workshop 2
Methods and ethics of interviewing war crime survivors (best practices of court-relevant interviews, trauma-informed interviewing)
Speakers: Roman Koval (Truth Hounds), Johana Kotišová (University of Amsterdam)
16.30 – 18.00
Drinks
Non-alcoholic drinks at the conference venue
Registration
Please register here (link TBA).
Students aspiring for ECTS: Please register by sending an email to J.Kotisova@uva.nl.