Images that devour us: reflections on tigers, citizen journalism and news coverage

Abstract

This study reflects on image and journalistic reports through the comparison of a video made by Indian journalist Somreet Bhattacharya using a mobile on a fatal tiger attack occurred on September 23, 2014 at the National Zoological Park in New Delhi, India, and the report published the next day by himself in The Times of India, the largest English-language newspaper in that country. The hypothesis is that both approaching forms produce a differentiated symbolic apprehension and reports of the fact. The method employed was the phenomenological analysis. The result suggests that the video may carry content related to archetypal images, therefore being linked to the perception of a deep time level. The newspaper report, here connected to life stories method, seems to record a more superficial and immediate layer of the fact.