Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood by Lilie Chouliaraki wins top awards in 2025

Professor Lilie Chouliaraki’s book Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood (Columbia University Press, 2024) has been awarded both the Outstanding Book Award of the International Communication Association (ICA) and the Best Book Award of the ICA Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division, two of the highest honours in the Media and Communications field. Professor  Chouliaraki is the only person to have won the ICA Outstanding Book Award twice,  having also won in 2015 for The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (Polity, 2013).

Professor Chouliaraki, Chair in Media and Communications in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, said: "I am deeply honoured by these recognitions, which I take not only as acknowledgements of my work but also as signs of the urgency of understanding how victimhood is mobilised in today’s politics. My hope is that Wronged will contribute to broader conversations about justice, care and solidarity in our societies, and about the values that ought to guide our democracies."

The ICA Outstanding Book Award 2025 judges commented: “Wronged is a compelling and timely work that addresses pressing political challenges in contemporary society. It is a theoretical tour-de-force showcasing how Critical Discourse Analysis, a key method in Communications, can illuminate the political, social and cultural dynamics in our historical period. The book explores who is recognised as a victim, how victimhood is weaponised through power relations and how these uses of victimhood bring about a politics of cruelty rather than simply evoking sympathy - thereby offering a nuanced perspective on political polarisation. It is conceptually innovative and deeply insightful, expertly synthesising ideas from political communication, feminism and cultural studies, while its relevance to current political and cultural discourse makes Wronged a vital contribution to the field.”

The ICA Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division Best Book Award (co-winner) judges commented: "Lilie Chouliaraki’s Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood makes a significant theoretical contribution to scholarship on pain and suffering by exploring victimhood as a site of social contestation and a resource for collective agency. It examines the criteria determining who is entitled to claim victimhood and dissects the mechanisms controlling the victim-perpetrator binary. The book notably shows how privileged groups strategically use victimhood to strengthen social inequalities, drawing on rich historical and contemporary examples. By framing the language of pain as a generative social force, the book calls for an analysis of victimhood as an analysis of injustice, challenging readers to rethink the politics of suffering on a global scale."

Wronged was also shortlisted for the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Monograph of the Year Award, and the Breaking the Walls of Science Award in the Social Sciences and Humanities category of the Breaking Walls Foundation, Berlin - underscoring the book's interdisciplinary reach and impact.

Find out more about Wronged here.