Towards a Journalism of Hope? Compassion and Locality in European Mediations of Distant Suffering

Despite the apparent failure of the European news media to create solidarity across geographic and mediated space during the Rwandan genocide and the Second Congo War, humanitarian suffering in the region has recently reached Europe through literature and cinema. Amongst the recent cultural oeuvres dealing with humanitarian issues in the region, we find the autobiography A long way from paradise (2010) by Leah Chishugi and the documentary film Blood in the Mobile (2010) by Frank Poulsen. Drawing on an empirical study encompassing online discussion sites, news media and magazines in three European countries (Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom), we ask how journalists and web
commentators relate to these two cultural products in particular, and human suffering on the African continent in general. We are particularly interested in whether and how compassion is verbalised and visualised in online and offline narratives when the African Great Lakes region is discussed. We also ask whether and how themes from the global south are embedded in northern localities. Through these questions, we strive to answer whether and by what means
these two documentary oeuvres, and the publicity they gained in online and offline mediated milieus, managed to challenge narrow and ingrained discourses of Africa as a region without hope.