War as Image: Visual Rhetoric and Image Ethics in Photojournalistic Coverage of Conflicts

Abstract

Journalistic coverage of armed conflicts is one of the most sensitive and controversial areas of public communication, especially because images play a central role in perception, mediation, persuasion, and the construction of reality. In a media ecosystem characterised by accelerating information, the rise of generative artificial intelligence, visual competition, and the proliferation of disinformation, the journalistic image ceases to be a mere factual record of reality. It becomes an event in its own right, with profound ethical, political, and social implications. Building on this premise, this article examines how journalistic ethics and social responsibility are challenged by the rhetorical strategies of images in armed-conflict coverage, and how this rhetoric affects the intelligibility of events and the formation of public opinion. The study’s guiding research question is: how can the media reconcile the persuasive power of journalistic images with ethical principles of truth, social responsibility, and respect for human dignity in conflict coverage? The aims of the article are to: (a) problematise the journalistic image of war as a media event and rhetorical device; (b) critically analyse the ethical implications of the production, circulation and reception/perception of these images; and (c) argue that visual literacy is a central dimension of the media’s social responsibility in combating disinformation and the symbolic violence of images. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, theoretical-conceptual, and critical approach, grounded in an interdisciplinary literature review across communication ethics, visual rhetoric, media studies, and visual cultures. Within this framework, it proposes a philosophical and semiotic reading of journalistic images of conflicts, understood not merely as representations, but as discursive practices with concrete moral and social effects.