This volume showcases how visual war journalism has emerged as a critical framework in digital journalism studies, portraying how it can enrich our understanding of news imagery in the contexts of ongoing wars, conflicts and crises.

Examinations of global newscapes recurrently bring to light incidents where visual war journalists are working in harm’s way, striving to record what they see unfolding before them, often at considerable personal risk. News organisations’ incessant demand for compelling imagery continues to intensify while, at the same time, the relative safety for those producing it is becoming ever more precarious. Taken together, this volume’s articles amount to an intervention, one striving to foster dialogue and debate about visual war journalism’s trajectories today to encourage alternative, critical thought about future prospects within the field. Each article speaks to what is a major escalation in the crisis of precarity over the right to bear witness, including when covering ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the civil protests against authoritarian control that are waging over imagery. Visual war journalism may empower us to empathise, to see the lived embodiment of humanity in the devastating consequences reported across news and social media sites, and thereby compel us to recognise our moral responsibilities and respond accordingly.

This volume will be an important resource for students and scholars of journalism, photojournalism, media studies and war studies. The articles were first published as a special issue of Digital Journalism, and are accompanied by three new, peer-reviewed articles and a revised Introduction.