By Cara Burke, Year 12
There is little doubt that, in the media, attention to tragedies can be focused on certain countries over others. How many of you know much, or anything, about the current Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, where tens of thousands of Rohingya have been forced out of Myanmar and fled to Bangladesh as they are an ethnic minority which are denied citizenship by the government (Read more about this: https://www.lgbexpress.com/?p=1176) ? How many more of you knew about the Las Vegas shooting, which killed 59 people and injured over 500 on the 1st of October (Read more about this: https://www.lgbexpress.com/?p=1077) ? We seem to know about some stories, from some countries, before we know about others. So why is this, and is it a problem?
It would be hard to suggest that the media is the only thing to blame – we, as consumers, drive what gets discussed and what news stories receive the most attention. Why people in western society might be more inclined to pay attention to stories based in western countries have been explored by experts looking specifically at why more people payed attention to the Paris terrorist attack on November 3rd 2015 rather than the Biuret suicide bombing the day before which claimed 41 lives. Emile Bruneau said, “It’s definitely true that one of the organizing principles of our psychology, of our brains, is that we’re strongly influenced by this perception of ingroup and outgroup.” So it could be that those in western countries see tragedies in western countries and feel more socially and culturally connected to them, and more inclined to empathise with people who they feel they can relate to more.
There could also be a shock factor which drives why people may pay more attention to one news story than another. It’s more shocking for us to see that there has been a large terrorist attack in America or a European country than there is an atrocity occurring in a part of the world which may be less known for the majority of us. We are far more inclined to read articles whose headlines shock us, and more inclined to discuss them too.
People could also hear more about one story in a western country because there has already been conversation circling around it. I, for one, find myself looking up the news stories which I might overhear from people’s conversations at school. Many people who speak English find their main news sources from English speaking countries, and American media does dominate most of our news sources. I at least find myself discussing American issues, though America is not geographically much closer to me than Myanmar is. Even though we are in an international school with people from countries all over the world, conversation about news is usually still focused around western countries. The few people I spoke to either did not know anything about what was happening in Myanmar, or knew vaguely about a muslim minority being persecuted, but all of them had heard and knew details about the Las Vegas shooting in America.
The question really is, is this a bad? And, what can we do about it? I suppose it depends on every individual’s different feeling. There is nothing unusual with being able to empathize with those who we relate to more, though we can choose whether we’d like to maintain the same mentality of who we empathize and relate to or not. In a world which is growing ever more globalised, the divide between societies is not as strong as we might imagine. If we start to actively pay attention to news stories and events in all countries of the world, then we could develop a deeper understanding of other countries and societies, and recognise their similarities to us, which would increase our empathy towards those countries and those people. We have to decide for ourselves how important this is, and use the power we have as consumers of the media to change what we see and what we discuss.
