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The Visual Storyteller Field Survey was produced in April 2020 as a collaboration between Catchlight and Authority Collective. The survey was created to assess various aspects of the contemporary visual storytellers' experience including financial precarity in the field; safety and health concerns of working photographers; questions of marginality that are either underscored or exacerbated by COVID-19; and to ultimately craft a picture of how this unprecedented global event has impacted visual media laborers. Results from 712 visual storytellers working in and around the COVID-19 crisis were analyzed by scholars of visual journalism, who relayed the information as presented in the charts below. The survey predominantly reached respondents from the United States, so the analysis is framed within and predicated on the socioeconomic, racial, gender, and ethnic categories as produced within American social constructs.

 
 
 
 

SURVEY ANALYSIS BY: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN & TARA PIXLEY / DESIGN: DEB PANG DAVIS