Both of these websites show the impact of the events in Darfur with pleas for help and donations, or simply to educate ones self about the events happening there. On both of these websites there is access to different pictures of the people in Darfur, some refugees and others tragic victims. Since the genocide in Darfur affects all the people there one would assume that there would be equal representation of age groups and sexes, however this is not so. Most of the pictures posted there are of women (of many ages) and children, with very few men; there are even more female children present in the pictures than male children. On EyesonDarfur.org they have a photo gallery of 10 pictures that plays like a slide show, explaining each photo. Only 2 of these photos include men, and one of those photos is of African union soldiers. One photo is of a burning village, while the other 7 are devoted to women and children. Of these pictures, 2 are of only young girls, 1 is of a group of women, 1 is of a deceased older women, and the others include male children, but the male children are not alone; they are all with a mother figure or other female figure. (To view this slideshow click here)
On the front page of SaveDarfur.org, there are a collection of news articles, blog posts, and other links for more information. At the top there are 3 photos in the heading along with the Save Darfur logo. This heading rotates between 3 different sets of pictures, 9 all together.
As you will notice, there are only 2 photos out of the 9 that have a strong male representation. The head on picture of the adult male is striking, but it does not evoke the same emotion as the head on pictures of the girl and the young woman. The picture of the man does not create the same sense of need (from the subject of the picture) and viewer guilt that the pictures of the women and girls do. The sense of guilt is most strong in the pictures including children or women (mothers) with their children.
This concept is in concordance with Susan Moeller’s Hierarchy of Innocence. She lists the hierarchy of innocence as such: “Crowned by the most innocent, the hierarchy begins with infants and then includes, in descending order, children up to the age of 12, pregnant women, teenage girls, elderly women, all other women, teenage boys, and all other men,” (p49). The photos on both of these websites coincide with Moeller’s assessment of the hierarchy of innocence. The significance of this is that western audiences are most likely to identify or sympathize with the most innocent, making it more likely for them to be moved to action. An audience would be much more enraged or inclined to do something about the suffering of a child or children than they would for an adult man or even a group of adult men.
This point is emphasized by StopGenocideNow's Flickr photo account. It seems that this user was in Darfur for a time and took photos of the people there. The absolute majority of his photos are of women and children, with a few teenage boys, and about 10 pictures involving adult men. This is out of about approximately 12 pages of photos solely of Darfurians, 18 pictures per page, that makes roughly 216 pictures. That's a 4.6% representation rate.
