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What Else is New?
Natural and man-made disasters are a constant fixture on any news outlet, has society had enough?
The Japanese nuclear disaster, the war in Libya, Saudi tanks in Bahrain – the list of imagery and news depicting tragic events has grown exponentially recently. It is relatively easy to recall the main facts regarding these current events, but when remembering the major disasters and conflicts of the past decade that have caught public attention, how well does the public actually know what is happening during and after?
For many, looking back at the disasters of the recent past serves as a reality check emphasising how quickly the events that once were at the centre of attention are forgotten. When a disaster or a crisis breaks out, society displays outrage, grief and a sudden desire to help the victims. Yet after the days or weeks of coverage die down, the international media pack their bags and the non-stop streaming of live reports quiets down, the public tends to perceive the issue as solved and focuses on something new. The intensity of the initial reaction does not, however, counteract its short lifespan. Once the media leaves, audiences seem to forget the affected individuals and communities still face months, years and even decades or recovery.
But why does society tend to lose all memory of human tragedies so quickly? According to psychologist Mary McNaughton-Cassill one explanation is that the media exposure to disasters and conflicts can cause a level of stress and anxiety that in turn makes individuals attempt to either ignore or forget the events. Although the crisis might take place far away and not cause any immediate threat to the person in question, the news coverage and the images of disasters can still be quite disturbing and cause worry that something similar could happen locally, no matter how unlikely. The level of this specific type of anxiety has been rising due to the internet and social media, which enable disasters to be experienced in real-time without the buffer of time and distance.
Yet for all of the people who take on crisis and disasters with such emotion that following the news stream becomes practically unbearable, there are also people who choose the exact opposite - emotional detachment. McNaughton-Cassill claims the main reason behind the emotional detachment is sensory overload, created by the overexposure of dramatic images. Due to the internet and the highly developed media landscape, people are able to experience practically every disaster everywhere in the world as it happens. Because of this constant flow of images and news, dreadful events begin to appear as mundane and fail to cause any emotional response.
Another explanation for the short memory of tragedies comes through so-called information overload, a concept made famous by Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock. Information overload refers to the difficulty of understanding an issue due to the presence of too much information. The general causes of information overload include a rapidly increasing rate of new information, the ease of duplication and transmission of data across the internet, and an increase in the available channels of incoming information. Nicholas Carr, an expert in the study of the intellectual and social effects of media, refers to several studies supporting the information overload theory. For example, people watching the news retained far more information when there were no scrolling headlines at the bottom of the screen and the more links there are in an online article, the lower the comprehension of the reader. Information overload thus implies that it is harder for the brain to make sense of things when bombarded with a constant flow of information.
In addition to its continuity, the flow of information is also extremely fast. Especially in connection to disasters and crisis, the news cycle tends to be short because there are new pieces of information arising almost all of the time. Speed is especially visible on the internet. According to Carr, the internet is an environment that supports skimming, fast thinking and superficial conclusions. In this environment finding information fast is a value and choices between different links and sources of information are made within seconds. Carr criticises this culture of fast information because it supports shallow and short-term knowledge in the formation of opinions that remain in the long-term memory.
The problem is that the fast and overwhelming news cycle does not allow individuals time to elaborate the information received, and that is why the reactions to real-life disasters are threatened to become increasingly shallow and detached. Carr warns that the hectic pace of today’s information cycle is already influencing the ability to empathise with others. The more distracted the audience becomes with different pieces of information, the less able they are to experience the most distinctively human forms of empathy and compassion.