Despite being a discursive continuum, broadcasted news is marked by daily ritual; it inscribes events into various pathemic depth levels. When catastrophes such as the 2004 South-Asian tsunami or the 9/11 attacks of 2001 occur, the depth level that is reached seems to crystallize into a specific form. My thesis work has led me to conceptualize this particular form as “emergency news” (information d’urgence) and the research aims at defining its conceptual and constitutive traits.“Emergency news” is mainly characterized by a significant amount of amateur images, intermingled with standard professional images. “Emergency news” thus sets up interpretation/reception conditions which in turn are able to heighten pathos to its maximum, within a background frame consisting of a proven truth rooted into social and cultural practices. When signs of imperfection —which are characteristic of amateur images— filter the “right” image reception, how can they reflect the natural world in a strikingly realistic way? How do they contribute to the pragmatic aims of urgency and emergency? Do they work in an autonomous manner? Based on a corpus composed of broadcasted images and news reports from three different countries (France, Portugal and the United States), the exploration of the various elements constitutive of “emergency news” guides the reflexion beyond the semio-textual strata, toward the analysis of the communicational paradigm. Thus, with its inscription in semiotic polyphony (revolving around the visual, the verbal and practices), this journey will question planes of immanence before leading to a stable definition of the “emergency news” syntagm
