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Introduction: Media Controversy and the Crisis of the Image

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Controversial Images

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Abstract

The media are inextricable from controversy. Their emergence and development have been dogged, determined and accelerated by censorship, media panics and public fascination with the seemingly uncontrollable spread of disturbing and taboo-breaking images into everyday life. Yet ‘controversy’ is a rarely used and much under-theorized term in academic studies of the media, even though controversies over specific images, from ‘video nasties’ to snapshots from Abu Ghraib, have structured our understanding of the media’s power, seductiveness and dangers.

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Authors
  1. Feona Attwood
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  2. Vincent Campbell
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  3. I. Q. Hunter
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  4. Sharon Lockyer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Middlesex University, UK

    Feona Attwood

  2. University of Leicester, UK

    Vincent Campbell

  3. De Montfort University, UK

    I. Q. Hunter

  4. Brunel University, UK

    Sharon Lockyer

Copyright information

© 2013 Feona Attwood, Vincent Campbell, I.Q. Hunter and Sharon Lockyer

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Cite this chapter

Attwood, F., Campbell, V., Hunter, I.Q., Lockyer, S. (2013). Introduction: Media Controversy and the Crisis of the Image. In: Attwood, F., Campbell, V., Hunter, I.Q., Lockyer, S. (eds) Controversial Images. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291998_1

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