Framing Violence

Collective Reading and Discussion

This workshop is part of an ongoing project, called Framing Violence, examining how violence is named, framed, and contested in public discourse. For this session, we focused on events in Amsterdam around the November 2024 football match between AFC Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. In the lead-up to the match, journalists, police, and local officials shaped both the encounters on the ground and the narratives that followed. Across sources, violence appears frequently — but never in the same way. What one actor calls aggression, another frames as self-defense; what an official report labels 'tension' may be described as intimidation elsewhere.

This case prompts the question: what does it take for an event to be called violent — and by whom?

Process — Participants chose a source to read after a brief introduction to the event and materials. The reading was guided by four question-cards, each exploring a different angle: how the language used shapes interpretation of the event; what narrative the images construct and how their visual details influence understanding; whose perspective is centered in the source and whose is absent; and how cultural and linguistic contexts shape the meaning and tone of the content. Afterward, participants shared insights and discussed how violence was represented and interpreted across sources.