Page 1 of 13 DO THE BENEFITS OF USING IMAGES OF DISTANT SUFFERING JUSTIFY THE ETHICAL DILEMMAS? ABSTRACT: Humanitarian organisations have become the new institutions representing distant suffering. However, it has been argued that the mediation of suffering as part of the humanitarian practice, has not adequately addressed the ethical dilemmas. The paper proposes to argue that for images of suffering to be regarded beneficial and hence justifiable, it must grant agency to depicted victims, and narratives represented must be carefully addressed. The first part of the paper outlines the main appeals in the literature on distant suffering. It does so by illustrating the ethical tension with reference negative and positive images appeals. The second part of the essay examines the visualised suffering in the Kony 2012 video and campaign. By analysing the narratives and use of internet activism embraced by the campaign, it demonstrates how the video eventually failed to conduct ethical mediation of suffering. “A picture is worth a thousand words…” – Unknown “(...) to photograph someone is a subliminal murder…”- Susan Sontag, On Photography “…because of the zeitgeist of the culture and the world, we need an enemy. We need to know who the worst is, and the world has already agreed.” – Jason Russell (on CNN “the Kony 2012 phenomenon”) Introduction The post-Cold War era witnessed an emerging role played by the media and humanitarian organisations, in representing social suffering through humanist photography (Cohen, 2001:168; Chouliaraki, 2010:2). As a result of the stressed significance placed on these agencies, humanitarian groups and social movements have become vital elements in what Ignatieff (1998:10) refers to as “the internationalisation of conscience”. Moreover, humanitarian organisations have consequently been labelled the “new institutions of representation” in the literature on distant suffering (Dogra, 2007:161; Figenschou, 2011:233; Mandianou, 2012). However, arguments concerning the means embraced by these new institutions, claim that the ethics of humanitarian solidarity is inadequately addressed (Mandianou, 2012:4).