Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
A sign reading "I am Brussels" is seen at a memorial at Place de la Bourse on March 23, 2016.(Photo: Patrik Stollarz, AFP/Getty Images)
Shame on you.
If you mourn one, mourn them all.
It’s what we heard on social media this week, when people were denigrated for lavishing sympathy on Brussels in the wake of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Tuesday's attacks,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>but not for bombing victims in Turkey earlier this month. It’s what we heard in November, when people were humiliated for feeling tortured about<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Paris but not by the victims in Beirut.
If you’re going to grieve online, you better wear armor.
"I think more and more we're learning that on the Internet you are involved in a political conversation," said Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"It's not always a place for empathy."
We rendezvous on social media after each terrorist attack, and the predictable cycle begins: On Twitter, we<span style="color: Red;">*</span>tuck the solidarity hashtags,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>#JeSuisCharlie #JeSuisBruxelles,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>neatly at the end of 140 characters. On Facebook, we<span style="color: Red;">*</span>apply filters, the French flag, the Belgium flag, over our smiles, our babies, our polished poses.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Then come<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the accusations of moral hypocrisy. What about Turkey, Syria the Ivory Coast? We battle to assign blame for<span style="color: Red;">*</span>selective sympathy. It’s the media. It’s the West. It’s Donald Trump.
The truth, experts say, is we’re all culpable. But when we vilify one another for the things we do care about, we risk making people less likely to express empathy about anything at all.
What social media illuminates<span style="color: Red;">*</span>is that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>we’re inclined to identify with people most like ourselves. More of us have ambled down the streets of Paris than have vacationed on the Ivory Coast.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The fact that social media users in the West rush to show solidarity with countries they have been to is obvious.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>What’s useful about social media is it<span style="color: Red;">*</span>allows<span style="color: Red;">*</span>us to see when the groups we identify with are too narrow. In other words, it can force you to do some soul-searching if you only find yourself caring about people who look like you.
Relatives of Zeynep Basak Gulsoy, who was killed in a March 13, 2016, car bomb explosion in Ankara, Turkey, mourn over her coffin.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Adem Altan, AFP/Getty Images)
The flip side is that when we express empathy online, we also become<span style="color: Red;">*</span>political targets.
Ryan Martin, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, said when people<span style="color: Red;">*</span>use<span style="color: Red;">*</span>shame to win an argument, it can dissaude the person they are<span style="color: Red;">*</span>scolding from expressing their feelings in the future.
If you were ridiculed for changing your Facebook profile picture to the colors of the French flag, were you reluctant when websites suggested you do the same for Belgium?
Since the Paris attacks, there have been hundreds of terrorist attacks around the world, according to the GlobalPost.
Readers shame the press for not covering these attacks with equitable rigor. The press<span style="color: Red;">*</span>shames readers for their apathy. But experts say that as the wall between the two keeps breaking down, we share the responsibility for making sure these stories are told.
The media response to the attack in Brussels compared to the attack in Ankara is striking. We are only one world when white people die
— Teymour (@Teymour_Ashkan) March 22, 2016
Sonya Song, who is affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and is a media researcher at Chartbeat, an online analytics company, said newsrooms are more likely to cover countries with tighter connections to their home country. It’s why we’re inclined to write about China (similar GDP) over a small nation in the Pacific Ocean.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>In a summary Song wrote of a recent Chartbeat study on news consumption, she noted that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>most nations see<span style="color: Red;">*</span>under 10% of Internet traffic<span style="color: Red;">*</span>from overseas websites.
So how do<span style="color: Red;">*</span>news organizations<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and their<span style="color: Red;">*</span>readers share the moral responsibility better? It’s a tricky question. Song is from China, which censors media heavily. "I think this is important you should read it, or I think this is important you should cover it,” is dangerous language, she said, because it diminishes<span style="color: Red;">*</span>freedom of the press.
Song does have one piece of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>advice for helping people identify<span style="color: Red;">*</span>more proportionally with terrorism’s victims in countries we've never set foot in, whose languages we may not speak, whose literature we may not read,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>whose gods we may not worship.
“Make the stories more interesting,” she said.
And after you read them, share them.
Because it isn’t just a story about how much coverage the media gave Paris over Turkey. It’s also a story about how much coverage you gave Paris over Turkey.
Shame on us all.
Relatives and friends mourn Destina Peri Parlak, who was killed in the Ankara bombing.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Adem Altan, AFP/Getty Images)
Dastagir is a mobile editor for USA TODAY who writes about media and culture.
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