Visual Crisis Communication in the Scandinavian Press

This study seeks to contribute to the emerging field of visual crisis communication by exploring the use of images in Scandinavian press when reporting on and/or commemorating the MS Estonia disaster after the event and addressing the following research questions:

RQ1: What kinds of images accompanied the Scandinavian press reports about the MS Estonia disaster in 2004, 2009 and 2014?

RQ2: How did the images change over time?

The selections made by the Scandinavian press for the ideational metafunction were probably motivated by the need to visualise both the impact of the disaster and the lack of real closure due to the unclear circumstances causing the tragic event. Both conceptual and narrative images were selected for publication.

Conceptual images. In 1999, five years after the disaster, the symbolic suggestive image of a huge cross marks the irreversible loss (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

In 2004, ten years after the disaster, only three conceptual images appeared and all of them visualised the same irreversible loss, which was visualised either through an absence or representation of what was left of the MS Estonia. Two images symbolically visualised the void left after the disaster by representing long shots of a marine landscape. The dramatic light of a sunset highlights the absence of the cruise ferry on an image of the immense sea and sky (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2

Figure 3

The third image analytically visualised the same loss in terms of concrete consequences: a photo taken by a remotely operated underground vehicle (ROV) shows the shipwreck, on part of which the ship’s name can be seen (see Figure 2). In 2009, fifteen years after the disaster, the same close-up ROV photo was the only selected conceptual image.

In 2014, twenty years after the disaster, the ROV photo was published again, twice, the repetition endowing it with a symbolic value in the eyes of viewers (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Apart from this photo, a wide range of conceptual representations was selected. The void left after the disaster was visualised symbolically: first by a long shot of the empty sea and then by two long shots of the MS Estonia before sinking. These also symbolised absence, because only the name of the Estline maritime company, the owner of the cruise ferry, was visible on the port side of the ship, not the name of the ship itself. Through a graphic visualisation of the MS Estonia, the absence appeared visually through the similarity between the graphic representation and the lost ship.

Three long shots, one of an empty life raft and two of the same capsized boat also symbolically represented this absence by replacing the majestic ship with small empty vessels. A similar strategy is used in a close up shot cabin keys held by a survivor. On the commemorative date of the disaster, the front page of a Swedish newspaper was symbolically covered by a graphic image of the ship’s name – instead of the whole ship – floating on a black sea (see Figure 5).

Figure 5

The choice to publish such visual replacements has a strong symbolic value because viewers are intended to imagine both the ship and the shipwreck when confronted by such images, and ‘in this kind of image detail tends to be de-emphasized in favour of what could be called “mood” or “atmosphere”’ (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006: 110), imbuing the image with symbolic meanings.

In 2014, the catastrophe was also represented as a process: two maps representing analytically the ship’s final hour before sinking. The consequences of the disaster were also represented through classifying representations of two similar long shots of rows of coffins behind a uniformed man. Another classifying representation visualised the consequences through a long shot of a group of orphans in front of a monument dedicated to the tragic event. Other conceptual images were also implicitly linked to the consequences of the tragedy, through medium shots of a diver, rescuer and surgeon, for example. Those images visually highlighted the identity of the represented social actors. A greater diversity of shots was chosen to visualise victims and survivors, but these cannot be identified without reading the accompanying captions. If the selected conceptual images focused on visualising irreversible states of affairs or identities, the narrative images were characterised by dynamic representations through the presence of various types of vectors in each image.

Narrative images. In 2004, one of the selected narrative images employed graphic visualisation in a triple-layered composite image of how the disaster had taken place (See Figure 2 from Dagens Nyheter, September 2004). In 2014, similar narrative images visualise the same tragic development (see Figure 6).

Figure 6

The other two narrative images from 2004 were photos of survivors dealing with the loss: in front of the MS Estonia memorial wall pointing at the names written on it and at home with a newspaper in front of them. In 2009, only one narrative image was published, a long shot of a group of people facing a big cross with flowers on the ground at Ersta Church in Sweden. The sea in the background both represented the loss and reminded viewers of its presence.

In 2014, the Scandinavian press chose to publish a particular narrative image no less than seven times: the dramatic hoisting operation of the wreck’s bow door. The shot highlighted not only the wreck, but also the red crane hoisting it up in the light of a ship’s head projectors. As that narrative image was the most used image across the three countries, it also acquired symbolic value through repetition. The selected visual representations of the rescue operations included images of survivors on a life raft, coming out of a helicopter and on a stretcher in front of ambulances. Images of an airborne helicopter and a life raft seen from the helicopter enhanced the narrative character of the images.

The dramatic character of the selected narrative representations was enhanced by images representing the grief and emotions of survivors hugging each other, talking to each other or surrounded by family members. One of the survivors holds his photo, taken by chance by another survivor, while signalling with the camera flash from a life raft. The photo shows him as the last person standing on Estonia’s hull –the last person to be saved. The same photo was published again as a background for a medium shot of the two survivors 20 years later. Because so few survivor stories can be represented, the repetition is not surprising and perhaps enhances the viewers’ emotional involvement.

Overall, the disaster was visually represented as a process: before it happened (through graphic images), while it happened (through graphic images) and after it happened (through photos of the shipwreck, social actors and their actions). Four main categories of actors were visually represented: (1) victims, (2) survivors, (3) family members and (4) outsiders (e.g. rescuers, a diver or even the King of Sweden). No representatives of the maritime company appeared. The only official person represented in all 93 images related to the disaster was the King of Sweden laying flowers on the memorial wall in Stockholm. The lack of other officials in the visual material selected to commemorate the disaster may be linked to the lack of clear explanations of the causes and satisfying motivations for salvaging the whole shipwreck. These actors were involved in two main types of actions related to the aftermath of the disaster: rescue operations and commemorative meetings. When not involved in these actions, the actors were represented as being explicitly in dialogue with each other or implicitly in dialogue with the viewers. The objects appearing in the images included the ship before the disaster, parts of the shipwreck, life rafts and boats, other ships, ambulances, helicopters and coffins.

The images also created and maintained an interaction between the visual representation and viewers through demand or offer images. In 2004, only one demand image was published; a Norwegian newspaper represented a grieving couple in their kitchen with a newspaper in front of them. Apart from their direct gaze, the home environment brought them closer to the viewers and strengthened the expected emotional involvement. In 2009, no demand images were published in any of the newspapers. In 2014, however, several categories of actors gazed directly at the viewers: three victims, several survivors and rescuers, a group of orphans and a press ombudsman. The choice to publish so many demand images can be linked to the fact that the people involved were still waiting for official answers and more active public involvement.

The selected offer images addressed the viewers indirectly in the sense that they contained no actor looking directly at the viewer. All images offered information not only about the fact that some people had been rescued, but also that the victims had not been forgotten. Images that were narratively structured represented survivors during or immediately after the rescue operation, people in front of the MS Estonia memorial wall (2004), in front of a big cross at Ersta Church (2009) and the King of Sweden laying flowers on the memorial wall (published twice in 2014). In all of these images, ‘the viewer’s role is that of an invisible onlooker’ (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006: 119), witnessing the ongoing process of dealing with the disaster and its consequences. Although offer images generally require less engagement from the viewers, they were supposed to have a strong impact because of their narrative structures. The other, conceptually structured, offer images appeared only in 2014. They had an impact on the relationship with the viewer by portraying victims, survivors and family members only in close-up or medium shots to bring the represented social actors closer to the viewer.

Our findings demonstrate that a series of changes occurred in the visual representation of the MS Estonia disaster from 2004 to 2014 in the Scandinavian press. Although the focus of the conceptual images remained on the loss, this shifted from the scarce visualisation of impersonal loss in 2004 and 2009 (an empty sea) to the detailed visualisation of personal loss in 2014. The publication of the ROV photo of the shipwreck in 2004, 2009 and 2014 marked a symbolic connection between the three commemorative milestones, suggesting the permanence of the loss. The empty sea that appeared twice in 2004 was replaced in 2014 by diverse images depicting floating objects that brought the human factor into focus in two ways: by visualising the cruise ferry still floating before the shipwreck and the various lifesaving vessels used during the rescue operation. The loss also became more personalised in 2014 through images of the disaster’s aftermath: cabin keys and coffins.

The visualisation of the personal loss in the conceptual images of 2014 included not only such objects, but also actors who have been directly or indirectly involved in the disaster. As already shown, the main actors visualised in 2014 were those directly involved in the disaster either as victims or as survivors. Additionally, the visual inclusion of those who had been involved indirectly added more concrete information about the identity of all those who have been affected by the crisis.

If the narrative images published in 2004 and 2009 were mainly images of bereaved family members, those appearing in 2014 included more categories of actors: victims, survivors in various contexts and even the King of Sweden. This change brought the disaster closer to the viewers – as if the disaster were happening again in front of their eyes. The graphic visualisation of the sinking, together with the images of the rescue and hoisting operations, also contributed to a re-actualisation of the still unanswered questions related to the disaster. The recurrent publication of the wreck-hoisting image in 2014 also implicitly reiterated the questions about the possible cause of the disaster and became a visual symptom of the ‘crisis after the crisis’, when the identity of the original crisis shifts over time (Rosenthal et al., 1989).

When analysing how the ideational metafunction was accomplished by the 2014 images, it appeared that the strategic choice of images had two significant consequences. First, by visualising the disaster as a process, the images clarified its impact, bringing it closer to the viewers. Second, by visualising a wider range of actors involved in more diverse types of actions than in the previous years, the images gave these actors a voice in the rhetorical arena, and had them intervene in the ‘crisis after the crisis’.

As far as the interpersonal metafunction is concerned, it was evident that the positioning of the viewer had also changed as time passed, because the sheer number of images increased for the anniversary reporting in 2014. That demand and offer images were equally present in 2014 indicated that viewers were both offered more detailed information and were also implicitly asked to enter the rhetorical arena and get involved. Taking everything into account, it became evident that the visual resources selected by the Scandinavian press in 2014 were meant to revive the tragedy and the still unsolved issues in a much more vivid way than in 2004 and 2009. By visually re-opening the rhetorical arena, the Scandinavian press provided not only a more nuanced reminder of the disaster, but also contributed to the resurgence of the “crisis after the crisis”.

According to rhetorical arena theory (RAT), what the news media write about a crisis – before, during and after it occurs – must also be considered crisis communication. Indeed, the news media represent some of the most influential voices during a crisis situation. Our longitudinal study of the images accompanying Scandinavian press reports about the MS Estonia disaster, and how the images changed over time, is one of the first studies of visual crisis communication involving a large corpus of empirical data. Out of the three roles listed up by Horsley (2016) in the introduction, investigators, critics and historians, the 15 newspapers from Sweden, Norway and Denmark first and foremost served as historians. This is no surprise, given that our longitudinal study focused on how the Scandinavian press transformed the disaster into a social icon over a period of 20 years. If the study only focused on the disaster which took place on 28 September 1994, we would have expected that the press would have served as investigators or critics and the disaster would have been considered a focusing event (Birkland, 1997). Focusing events are likely to induce media coverage when the number of people affected is high, the consequences are visible and tangible and the event is rare and dramatic (Birkland, 1997).

According to RAT and the type of crisis journalism that can be developed within the arena framework (Frandsen & Johansen, 2017a), we would have expected to see a little more media intervention – that is, reporters chasing the organisation perceived to be guilty in the MS Estonia disaster. However, in this case, the media coverage dominated. We seldom saw persuasive attacks performed by investigative journalists, and the news media are not rich in crisis news frames (see An & Gower, 2009).

Some moments are more important than others. Ritualised years of commemoration – such as twentieth anniversaries – seem to be extremely important at least in terms of the number of images presented. The Scandinavian press choose visuals to inform and emotionally involve viewers in the drama by representing what happened during and after the disaster. The anniversary visuals also included post-crisis pictures of survivors and families as well as pictures of memorials and commemorative events. The further away from the original event, the more important it became to cover the human stories and involve viewers through more personalised stories about victims and survivors. The choice of images thus seems to follow a somewhat ‘classical’ pattern describing a dramatic event over time. There were also images that obtained a more symbolic value through repetition (e.g. the hoisting of the bow door), and the repetitive use of specific images provided symbolic or iconic status to a specific framing of the event. For example, the hoisting of the bow door became a symbol pointing to the cause of the disaster. More importantly, the bow door was the only component of the cruise ferry which was raised – the bodies beneath the waves still have not been recovered. This unbearable situation for their relatives and the survivors caused a second crisis, so we are dealing with ‘a crisis after a crisis’ (theoretical underpinnings for these concepts and discussion of crisis identity shifts are beyond the scope of this article; cf. Frandsen & Johansen, 2017a).

What did the images not include? As already mentioned, there were no images representing the owner of the cruise ferry, Estline, except for the long shot photos in which the name of the maritime company was visible on the port side of the ferry. This may be explained by the complexity of the organisational ownership of this crisis, and the choice between verbal and visual resources to tell different parts of the story. The verbal text discussed the unsettled issues such as what caused the ship to sink, the involved actors and the parties responsible.

The MS Estonia remains a disaster with many unsettled issues. Not only was the cause never fully accepted by all parties – and there are still rumours about sabotage – but the relatives have not been satisfied either, because they have not been able to bury their loved ones. The disaster still puzzles numerous people, and this may explain the attention that it still attracts even 20 years after the event.

Throughout history, many shipping disasters have not only been focusing events, but have also become social icons, from the RMS Titanic (1912) to the Scandinavian Star (1990). Some crises transform into ‘social icons, around which broader meaning is constructed, maintained, symbolized and conveyed’ (Seeger et al., 2003: 6; cf. Frandsen & Johansen, 2017b). The MS Estonia disaster constitutes a focusing event, as the media coverage was intense not only in 1994 but up to 20 years later – has it also transformed into a social icon? Has it brought people together and provided them with elements of a collective identity and memory? The commemoration of the anniversaries points in this direction, although the issues connected to the causes and consequences are still not clear (see Frandsen & Johansen (2017b) for an elaboration).