The study “Visual representations of community in scholastic photojournalism: A thematic analysis of award-winning photographs from the national scholastic press association’s photo of the year contest” by Leslie Klein from University of Georgia looked at the understudied aspect of photojournalism: student photojournalists. It did so by analyzing qualitatively 229 photographs from the National Scholastic Press Association’s Photo of the Year Contest.
Student photojournalism plays a role in the construction of the collective memory of the school and the winners in student photojournalism competitions are conferred cultural capital even if the actual monetary rewards are modest if not nonexistent. However, the awards themselves may guide (both in student photojournalism and professional photojournalism) the photos to be of certain style in order to win awards and thus reduce the diversity of the photos,
The data for the study was taken from Photo of the Year individual award winners and honorable mentions from National Scholastic Press Association. The photos were available from 2009 onwards along with judges’ comments. Both news and feature photos were analyzed.
The most common theme in the photos was connection. This includes photos where people support each other in grief or cheer their sports team. It was notable that even photos about tragedies chose to showcase connection and community instead of the tragedy itself. Similarly, collaboration was a theme – the students were more likely to be pictured working together than by themselves.
Finally, citizenship was a consistent theme from 2009 to 2022, with the students being shown as citizens of their local communities and of the nation as a whole. All these themes differ from what is rewarded and newsworthy in professional photojournalism: the latter show much more photos showing bad news, adversity and despair.
In conclusion, the author speculates that the preponderance of positive themes may indicate that there might be pressure on the students only to cover positive aspects of the school, meaning self-censorship when covering negative aspects. All in all, student photography differed from professional photography in that the news valued that were central were different – for example, timeliness was the most central value for professional photojournalism but not for student photojournalism.
The article “Visual representations of community in scholastic photojournalism: A thematic analysis of award-winning photographs from the national scholastic press association’s photo of the year contest” by Leslie Klein is in Journalism (free abstract).
Picture: Silhouette photo of man holding camera by Michael Henry.
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