Visual storytelling in international journalism as an instrument of intercultural communication

Abstract

The article examines visual storytelling in international journalism as a key mechanism of intercultural communication under the conditions of the visual turn, in which images transform from an auxiliary element into an autonomous means of producing knowledge about the world and interpreting global processes. It is emphasized that the visual narrative, while possessing the effect of a universal language, simultaneously represents a culturally coded sign system: the meaning of an image is shaped not only by its visible content but also by connotative layers, historical allusions, symbolic series, and modes of reading that differ across societies. On this basis, visual communication is described as a space of tension between the possibility of empathetic rapprochement and the risks of manipulation, stereotyping, and the consolidation of hegemonic discourses, where the representation of the Other is capable of marginalizing the subject, substituting lived experience with simulacra, and normalizing a particular worldview. The interdisciplinary analytical framework integrates hermeneutic interpretation, visual semiotics, discourse analysis, and the phenomenology of perception, making it possible to link the internal organization of the image with power relations and the cultural preconditions of spectatorship. A typology of strategies of visual representation—exoticization, victimization, and humanization—is proposed, demonstrating how editorial expectations and cultural myths guide the audience’s gaze from objectification and compassion fatigue toward the recognition of subjectivity and the dismantling of binary oppositions of us/them. Special attention is paid to the ethical limits of visualizing violence and suffering in the digital environment, where criteria of authenticity are blurred and the significance of the categories of visual truth, human dignity, and social responsibility increases. It is shown that the relevance of visual storytelling for intercultural dialogue is determined by the development of critical visual literacy and the transition from monologic visuality to dialogic modes of representation, in which the plurality of interpretations becomes a condition for a more just and inclusive media space.