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Distant Suffering and the Mediation of Humanitarian Disaster

Johannes von Engelhardt* & Jeroen Jansz†

Abstract (241 words)

Most of today’s humanitarian catastrophes are taking place in countries of the so-called Global

South. At the same time, countries in these parts of the world are often among those least

likely to be visited by those living in the West. In this configuration, what most of Western

audiences know about and how they relate to victims of large-scale humanitarian disaster is

almost exclusively derived – directly or indirectly – from various media accounts. Not

surprisingly, media scholars have thus recently shown a growing interest in theorizing Western

spectatorship of mediated distant suffering. The goal of this chapter is to offer a conceptual

contribution to his debate by discussing four dimensions in the representation of distant

suffering that appear to be crucial in facilitating or foreclosing engagement in spectators that

typically are very much removed – geographically and psychologically – from the material

reality of disaster. Distance encompasses various ways in which representation renders

humanitarian crises as distant or as proximate to the audiences. Actuality in the

representation of humanitarian crises describes the extent in which stories of human suffering

are told as actual and consequential. Scale refers to the depiction of suffering as that of single

individuals or of large groups. Relievability highlights the significance of presenting suffering

as something that can mitigated in the present and/or prevented in the future. We conclude

the chapter by discussing contemporary changes in the media landscape and avenues for

future research based on our framework.

Keywords:

Distant suffering, Representation of disaster, Empathy, Compassion, Moral psychology

* Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture Department of Media & Communication, room L3-74 Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, NL-3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands Email: vonengelhardt@eshcc.eur.nl † Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture Department of Media & Communication, room L3-105 Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, NL-3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands Email: jansz@eshcc.eur.nl

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1 Introduction

Many of the most extensively mediatized events of the early 21st century were instances of

large-scale human suffering caused by violent conflict or natural disaster that unfolded, for

the most part, in countries belonging to the so-called Global South (World Bank, 2010). What

Western audiences know about victims of large-scale humanitarian disaster is thus almost

exclusively derived from various media accounts. As Susan Sontag observed in her seminal

work Regarding the Pain of Others (2003): “being a spectator of calamities taking place in

another country is a quintessential modern experience” (p. 16).

The first part of this chapter provides a brief overview of how Western media represent

humanitarian disaster in the Global South. In the second part of the chapter, we move our

focus of attention to Western audiences and to the circumstances under which people tend

to care and act. For this purpose, we propose four dimensions in the representation of distant

suffering that can either open up or foreclose spaces for audiences to engage with distant

suffering: Distance encompasses the various ways in which representations render

humanitarian crises as distant or as proximate to the spectator. Scale refers to the depiction

of suffering as that of single, identifiable individuals as opposed to that of collectives. Actuality

describes the extent in which stories of human suffering are told as actual and consequential.

Relievability highlights the significance of representational practices that present distant

suffering as something that can mitigated in the present and/or prevented in the future.

The concluding part of the chapter includes a brief reflection on the changing media landscape

with respect to distant suffering as social media and other online platforms challenge the

dominant position of traditional mass media, in particular television. We end by presenting a

number of pointers for future research to contribute to a more balanced and engaging

portrayal of distant suffering.

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2 Representation of Distant Disaster

It is through the mass media that we learn about and make sense of large-scale human

suffering in distant countries. As simple and commonplace as this statement may appear, it

offers us a valuable entry point into the debate, as it forcefully draws our attention to the

significance of two other equally simple but slightly more contentious observations: that not

all instances of mass human suffering receive the same amount of international media

coverage; and that different types of human suffering are covered in very different ways. As

the focus of this chapter is on audience engagement (manifested in emotional, cognitive or

behavioral responses) vis-à-vis media coverage of humanitarian crisis, these two observations

serve as the starting point of our argument.

With respect to the first observation, research has repeatedly shown that – contrary to a naïve

‘window-to-the-world’ understanding of the media (McQuail, 2010) – the amount of media

coverage received by a particular humanitarian disaster is only partly determined by its scope

and severity. Here, a number of quantitative studies have attempted to statistically model

media attention as a function of both disaster-specific and country-specific attributes,

revealing that the scope of human suffering typically explains merely a small proportion of the

variance in media attention. Measures of cultural, economic and geographical proximity have

repeatedly been identified as important predictors of Western disaster coverage (Belle, 2000;

Adams, 1986; Simon, 1997; Singer, Endreny & Glassman, 1991; Joye, 2010; CARMA, 2006). For

example, both Belle (2000) and Adams (1986) found that the level of popularity that a given

country enjoys among US tourists can serve as a significant predictor for the amount of

disaster coverage.

It follows from this that some of the world’s largest humanitarian crises hardly register at all

with Western audiences (see e.g., Moeller, 2006) – and arguably neither with policy makers

(Hawkins, 2002). Some of the most devastating recent humanitarian catastrophes have

received very little and/or belated coverage. These included some of the most horrifying

instances of mass suffering such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the second Congo War

1998-2003 – despite the fact that the latter left up to 5.4 million people dead, probably making

it the most deadly conflict since World War II (IRC, 2008). This partiality in coverage is often

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understood as a consequence of institutional, economic and ideological structures that shape

(and often constrain) the work of media.

As some instances of mass human suffering do not find their way onto Western media

agendas, these ‘forgotten crises’ thus run the risk of remaining largely invisible for Western

audiences. With respect to public engagement, the most direct and palpable effects of this

can observed in donation behavior. Not surprisingly, a number of studies have thus confirmed

that the more coverage a disaster receives, the more people are willing to give money (Martin,

2013; Simon, 1997). Also for crises that are already ongoing, donations start pouring in only

after media attention picks up (Waters & Tindall, 2011).

However, while the sheer visibility of distant suffering is indisputably a necessary condition

for any form of public engagement, we will see that it is by no means a sufficient one. Our

concern here is therefore not so much directed on whether but on how stories of suffering

others are told to us.

Again turning to donation behavior as one of the most easily measurable indicators of public

engagement, it appears that Western publics are more likely to donate when a set of criteria

regarding the disaster, its victims and its media reporting are met. In an extensive literature

review of studies on charitable giving, Bekkers and Wiepking (2010) identify a set of

mechanisms that influence whether people are willing to make a donation. For example, the

authors show that the perceived deservingness and helplessness of the beneficiary plays a

decisive role. While there is some evidence that portraying victims as having a certain degree

of agency – rather than as completely helpless – can increase willingness to give (Bennet &

Kottasz, 2000), findings from the same study also suggest that representations should employ

“unashamedly emotive advertising imagery” (p. 358) that shows beneficiaries as utterly

destitute and deserving. At the same time, overly negative and offsetting depictions of

suffering seem to work counter-productive in fundraising efforts (Dyck & Coldenvin, 1992).

These findings already go to show that, as Bekkers and Wiepking (2010) posit, “[i]t may well

be that instead of the most needy, those with the best marketers receive the highest

contributions” (p. 24).

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Given this pivotal role of representation for public engagement, it is not surprising that much

research has been devoted to studying media coverage of distant humanitarian crises. Here,

we find a body of literature that is, for the most part, fiercely critical towards media

representations of distant mass suffering for all too easily falling back on cultural stereotypes

and imagined binary oppositions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Joye, 2009; Chouliaraki, 2006;

Konstantinidou, 2007). For example, Joye’s critical discourse analysis of Belgian television’s

coverage of international disasters (2009) leads him to conclude that disaster reporting

reproduces a binary worldview that is rooted in “a division of the world in zones of poverty

and prosperity, danger and safety.” (p. 58). Contemporary discourses on distant disaster are

also often said to deepen and reproduce historical chasms between colonial spectators and

colonized sufferers by drawing on neo-colonial discursive repertoires and narratives of

backward tribalism and pre-modernist irrationality (e.g. Bankoff, 2001; Brookes, 1995; Wall,

1997; Franks, 2005; Philo, 2002). As well as being criticized for conveying a skewed and binary

understanding of the world, mainstream Western media coverage of humanitarian disaster

has been described as typically delivering little more than sensationalist sound bites of distant

misery, thus failing to provide audiences with sufficient context and meaningful explanations

(e.g. Moeller, 1999; Joye, 2009; Franks, 2005; CARMA, 2006).

A related concern has been the degree to which victims are presented as mere victims, i.e. as

stripped of any form of human agency, and as lacking aspirations, self-sufficiency and

competence. In his analysis of Belgian television’s disaster coverage, Joye (2009) finds that

distant victims are depicted as passive, vulnerable and “part of the scenery” (Joye, 2009, p.

52). The increasing focus on children in disaster reporting further serves to oversimplify

complex humanitarian tragedies: “Skeletal children personify innocence abused. They bring

moral clarity to the complex story of a famine.” (Moeller, 2002, p.36). In the case of famine in

Africa, it is the eternal picture of the innocent and anonymous starving child which “reinforces

the spectacle of an Africa full of passive, suffering victims” (Franks, 2005, p.134).

We conclude this brief review of the field with two qualifying remarks. Firstly, while it has

become very common to speak of ‘the media’ as if referring to a coherent and homogeneous

whole of outlets, this evidently is a gross and precarious simplification. Despite ongoing

processes of horizontal integration in both print and broadcast markets, relevant differences

in coverage remain even within the so-called mainstream media. For example, Scott’s study

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(2009) uncovers large differences between different UK newspapers with respect to the

representation of Africa. It is noteworthy that this study is also one of the very few exceptions

within the overwhelmingly critical and pessimistic body of literature, concluding that the

“coverage [of Africa] is not as marginalized, negative or trivial as it is often accused of being”

(2009: 554). In short, it is crucial to not lose sight of the fact that that Western coverage of

humanitarian disasters in the Global South is neither all homogeneous nor all bad.

Secondly, the literature that we present above and build on below is almost exclusively

concerned with the study of Western media, showcasing a pervasive and detrimental cultural

and geographical favoritism within the social sciences in general. Only recently, a handful of

studies have attempted to also include coverage of non-Western media in their analysis, often

leading to valuable and unexpected findings (Scott, 2009; de Beer, 2010; Fingenschou, 2010).

For example Figenschou’s (2011) study on the representation of distant suffering suggests a

very different kind of portrayal of victims on Al-Shazeera English. This should serve to remind

us that coverage of suffering not only varies substantially within Western media, but also

between different Western and non-Western outlets.

3 The Audience: Reception and Responses

On a most superficial level, media representations of humanitarian disaster provide audiences

with information about the scope and nature of an ongoing calamity. On a more fundamental

yet also more tacit level, these representations of suffering also carry moral frameworks on

how to relate to and care about the wider world (Chouliaraki, 2006; Silverstone, 2007; Tester,

2001; Boltanski, 1999): “teaching [us] how to feel and act ‘right’ – ‘a sentimental education’ –

falls under the remit of journalistic work” (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012, p.62).

One of the most influential accounts of the moral impact of media is Moeller’s (1999)

Compassion Fatigue thesis. Her book provides an in-depth analysis of the US media’s coverage

of a range of humanitarian crises, such as the famines in Sudan and Somalia during the early

1990s, and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Moeller argues that the US television audience

has lost its ability to feel for those in misery due to an overflow of decontextualized stories

and visuals, and a resultant general sense of powerlessness. Compassion Fatigue for her is “a

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consequence of rote journalism and looking-over-your shoulder reporting. It is the

consequence of sensationalism, formulaic coverage and perfunctory reference to American

cultural icons” (p. 32).

While intuitively appealing for many and frequently encountered in public discourse, the

thesis has received serious scholarly criticism and has been described as “an urban myth”

(Cohen, 2011, p. 191; also see Campbell, 2012a). Compelling empirical evidence is lacking and

the few studies that address the thesis seem to contradict its main argument. For example, a

study by Höijer (2004) does not support the notion of an overall decline in compassion, but

instead paints the picture of an audience that is highly diverse in the ways its members

experience and make sense of distant suffering. Similarly, the results of Seu’s focus group

study (2010) also demonstrate that audiences actively re-interpret messages of human

misery.

This diversity in interpretations of and responses to mediated distant suffering is also a

prominent feature in the work of Lilie Chouliaraki. Chouliaraki contests both overly pessimistic

and optimistic generalities on the media’s potential to facilitate moral engagement. In

Spectatorship of Suffering (2006), she explores various modes of representing distant suffering

that might either invite or foreclose a spectator’s position of cosmopolitanism, described as

“a fundamental orientation to the stranger, a welcoming of differences” (Ong, 2009, p. 450).

While Chouliaraki’s seminal work has inspired in a number of recent studies on the media

coverage of distant suffering (Joye, 2009, 2010; Verdonschot & Von Engelhardt, 2012), how

and to what degree different forms of disaster reporting facilitate a cosmopolitan stance in

audiences has not been sufficiently addressed empirically. Thus far, researchers of mediated

distant suffering mostly concentrated on representation rather than on reception (see Ong,

2009; Tester,2001; Höijer, 2004). In the following section we therefore aim to introduce a

framework to might aid future work on audience’s responses to mediated distant suffering.

4 Towards a Conceptual Framework for the Reception of Mediated Suffering

The framework that is discussed below is intended as a conceptual tool to think about and

research the relation between mediated distant suffering and its interpretations and

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responses in Western audiences. The framework has four distinct, yet interrelated

dimensions. These four dimensions of distance, scale, actuality and relievability are meant to

highlight ways through which media representations can create or foreclose spaces of

audience engagement.

4.1 Distance

How much we care about others in pain is closely related with perceived cultural and

geographical proximity. Authors such as Loewenstein and Small (2007) have shown that

proximity can play a potent role in fostering compassionate responses to suffering. The

authors highlight what they call sensory proximity, suggesting that “one is more likely to care

about other persons to the extent that one can, […] see them, feel them, touch them, or hear

them” (p. 117). Similarly, researchers have found a ‘here-and-now bias’ when it comes to the

arousal of empathy (Hoffman, 2000).

Importantly, however, the positive sense of familiarity we experience towards those with

whom we habitually interact face-to-face can be extended to distant others, provided the

other is presented as not so different from ourselves (Batson & Shaw, 1991). The question of

distance then inevitably becomes an issue of representation. For example, Cialdini, et al.

(1997) developed the concept of “one-ness” to conceptualize how much of ourselves we see

in a suffering other. In a series of experiments, one-ness was shown to be correlated with

compassionate responses and to be a significant predictor of a willingness to help. As

Hoffman, one of the leading empathy scholars asserts, “[s]eeing that people in other cultures

have similar worries and respond emotionally as we do to important life events […] should

contribute to a sense of oneness and empathy across cultures” (Hoffman, 2000, p. 294-295).

In addition, we posit that there is another form of distance that carries implications for the

way in which Western audiences make sense of mediated large-scale human suffering. This

distance stems from the audiences’ limited capacity to imagine what it is like to be that other

person. This limitation is not the result of a media-induced apathy, as the compassion fatigue

thesis has it, but of the fact that the nature of the depicted suffering might remain truly and

literally incomprehensible. After all, we must assume that few members of a Western public

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can empathetically relate to the lived experiences of constant food insecurity or famine, of

fleeing from civil war, of life in a refugee camp. Not only does the “domesticity in reception”

(Chouliaraki, 2006) mean that the reality of the observer at the point of media consumption

is radically removed from the reality that is represented. Also, the Western spectator will most

likely be unable to fall back on relevant past experiences to put her/himself in the shoes of

the other.

Psychological research has indeed shown how a lack of shared experience restricts the

capacity for empathetic responses. For example, experimental research on these ‘empathy-

gaps’ has demonstrated that thirsty respondents who have just exercised in a gym are more

likely than non-thirsty individuals to empathetically appreciate thirst-induced suffering when

presented with a story on hikers who were lost in the mountains without food or water (Van

Boven & Loewenstein, 2003). Correspondingly, research also confirms that going through a

traumatic experience, such as rape, increases the level of empathy for victims of the same

type of suffering (Barnett, Tetreault, Esper & Bristow, 1986, in Loewenstein & Small, 2007).

4.2 Actuality

Actuality as our second dimension is introduced as related, but distinct to distance as

discussed above. Actuality draws attention to the possibility of a perceived detachment from

realities of distant suffering, a detachment that is much more radical than what is captured by

distance.

This issue of whether distant suffering is perceived as ‘actual’ has been discussed in different

terms by different authors. For example, Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen and Cottle (2012) postulate

that “the distinction between reality and fiction may lose its relevance when the sufferer and

the possibility of action are far away” (p. 77). Similarily, Cohen (2001) observes that

“[t]elevised images of distant misery don’t seem to belong to the same world as our familiar

daily round.” (p. 17). Tester (2001) speaks of “material solidity” and postulates that, as victims

of mediated suffering lack this property, “the [suffering] other is, in a profound sense, not

present in the world” (p. 79). What these authors have in common, is a sensitivity to a real

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danger of perceiving mediated distant suffering as non-actual, as being subtly rendered

fictional and thus the inconsequential.

Evidently, audiences are also radically removed from distant human suffering in the sense that

any potential action to ease the other’s pain is highly mediated. None of the available moral

actions directed at victims of distant suffering carry the promise of ending the particular

instance of suffering that one is confronted with. Furthermore, Vestergaard (2008) argues that

even in instances where members of an audience do act by donating money, representations

of suffering cannot enter the life world of the audience as actual and real, as the moderate

amounts remain inconsequential.

Mediated distant suffering also runs the risk of being displaced from the actual world of the

spectator and thus tacitly fictionalized as a result of Just World beliefs. Originally developed

by Lerner (1980), the “Just World” theory describes a human need to believe that bad things

happen for a reason and that people usually get what they deserve. A considerable body of

Just World studies has observed this phenomenon, and reflected on its causes and

consequences (Hafer & Begue, 2005 ; also see Furnham, 2003).

In the most recent extensive review of Just World studies, Hafer and Begue (2005) identify a

variety of strategies typically employed to protect Just World believes when faced with

contradicting evidence. Among others, they draw attention to an empirically observed “coping

mechanism [which] allows observers to reduce the threat to their need to believe in a just

world by convincing themselves that similar injustices will not befall them; that is, though

injustice appears to occur in the larger world, at least their own immediate environment is

just” (p. 146). The authors then take this a step further and hypothesize that “[p]eople can see

targets of injustice as belonging to a different world than their own; thus, for example,

individuals can separate their own just world from the unjust or random world of innocent

suffering” (idem). In this way, Just World beliefs can be protected even in the face of patent

distant injustice. When it comes to mediated distant suffering, media representations that

feed into Just World beliefs might thus encourage a mode of reception which subtly pushes

imagined zones of poverty and danger out of the realm of the actual.

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4.3 Scale

The suffering of individuals is perceived and processed very differently from that of groups or

masses. In an extensive review of studies on charitable giving, Bekkers and Wiepking (2010)

show that awareness of need is a main mechanism affecting people’s decision to make a

contribution. Awareness of need as understood by the authors encompasses – but is not

limited to – the scale of the humanitarian crisis. If the need is perceived as greater, overall

willingness to donate tends to be higher.

Unfortunately, however, the mechanisms that underlie moral responses towards others have

also been shown to not be ‘well-tuned’ to respond adequately to large-scale atrocity (Slovic,

2007). Within the field of moral psychology, this observation that humans struggle to come to

terms with large-scale human suffering has received growing academic attention (Slovic,

2007; Kogut & Ritov, 2005, 2007; Small, Loewenstein & Slovic, 2007; Cameron & Payne, 2011).

Based on a review of a significant body of studies from cognitive and social psychology, Slovic

(2007) explores the phenomenon of what he refers to as “psychic numbing” in the face of

mass atrocity. It is important to note that what Slovic describes here is something essentially

different from a process of compassion fatigue, as it does not point to an incremental

emotional tiring of the audience, but instead emphasizes a fundamental human inability to

‘feel’ for the masses. What is more, there is even some evidence that this also applies to small

groups. Participants in an experimental study (Kogut & Ritov, 2005) showed significantly

greater emotional response and willingness to help when shown a picture of a single child in

need than when confronted with the suffering of a group of eight children. This ‘identified

victim’ effect, which leads people to respond more significantly to identified victims than to

anonymous masses or small groups, also corresponds to studies showing how audiences

respond more empathetically to news stories employing a human interest frame (e.g.

Valkenburg, Semetko & de Vreese, 1999).

The discussion about the psychological causes of psychic numbing as a result of scale has

produced two main explanatory vantage points. In the first model, it is argued that people are

simply less capable of being emotionally moved even by small groups; individuals are

perceived as more psychologically coherent and concrete, generally eliciting more emotions

than groups (Slovic, 2007). In the second explanatory model, the lack of empathetic reaction

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is explained as the result of a mechanism of self-defense. In order to not be overwhelmed by

large scale suffering, people regulate their emotions, leading to relative insensitivity towards

the pain of groups (Cameron & Payne, 2011). Whatever the underlying causes, it is worth

stressing that scale – just as distance – should not be understood as a robust property of

instances of human suffering, but rather as something that is formed in the minds of the

audience through stories and visual impressions. Whether a crisis is perceived and processed

as the suffering of individuals, or that of a mass, is dependent on representation.

4.4 Relievability

Closely related to this last aspect of actuality is the issue of relievability. Reflecting on the

implications of depicting suffering, the ever-quotable Susan Sontag (2003) contends that

“compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” 2003,

p. 90). In line with this, Susan Moeller (1999) saw a widespread lack of audience efficacy as an

integral element of what she observed as a general Compassion Fatigue in US audiences.

Moral psychologists have indeed provided empirical evidence that perceived self-efficacy can

increase feelings of compassion towards others who are suffering (e.g. Goetz, Keltner &

Simon-Thomas, 2010). Bekkers and Wiepking (2010) identify efficacy as one of eight

mechanism that affect people’s decision to donate. As their review shows, efficacy is primarily

related to the amount and type of information that potential donors have about how their

contribution would mitigate suffering. If this information is missing or unfavorable, the

willingness to engage and give money decreases.

Approaching the suffering of distant others from a vantage point of outcome-oriented realism

rather than heart-felt compassion or global solidarity is at the core of what Chouliaraki

describes as the rise of the ‘Ironic Spectator’ (2013). Highly aware of and skeptical towards

the persuasive techniques of humanitarian organizations that have become bureaucratized

and global actors, an audience that increasingly consists of ‘Ironic Spectators’ also creates new

vulnerabilities for humanitarian organizations - as recently showcased through the massive

critical backlash faced by the makers of the Kony 2012 online campaign video (see Madianou,

2012; von Engelhardt & Jansz, 2014; Nothias, 2012).

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What can also be deduced from the above is that more public engagement can be expected

for humanitarian disasters that appear more suitable for outside humanitarian intervention

(e.g. a post-earthquake scenario) than crises that seem to have less straightforward remedies

(e.g. long-lasting civil war). At least when it comes to donation, experimental evidence

provides support for this partiality in the concern for distant suffering, showing that donations

for victims of so-called man-made disaster are less likely than donations for victims of so-

called natural disasters (Zagefka, Noor, Brown, Moura & Hopthrow, 2011).

In reflecting on the wider implications of these findings, the necessity arises again to

emphasize that the way in which audiences perceive distant humanitarian catastrophes – and

thus resultant suffering as relievable rather than inevitable – is very much a matter of

representation. How audiences understand suffering that is caused by poverty or complex

humanitarian disasters is thus dependent on the type of stories that are told. For example, it

has been observed that complex disasters such as famines – created by a combination of both

man-made and natural factors – are routinely covered merely in terms of their ‘natural’

causes, thus underexposing their social, political and historical genesis (Ploughman, 1995;

Campbell, 2012b). While these reductionist accounts thus do not do justice to the complexity

of the realities on the ground, they might be more successful in rallying the public to donate

money. However, while it appears to be true that audiences are more likely to donate for

‘clear-cut’ and simple disasters, there is also some encouraging evidence that more sustained

engagement and interest in distant humanitarian disasters can be fostered by proving context

and highlighting connections and interdependencies with the life world of the distant suffering

other (Philo, 2002).

This issue not only calls for more concerted empirical efforts, but also puts into relief a possible

tension that can exist between the agendas of different story tellers of suffering: humanitarian

organizations and media organizations. In particular when it comes to complex humanitarian

disasters that typically also have a political/conflict dimension (such as famines and most

refugee crises), funding efforts of humanitarian organizations might be obstructed by quality

media coverage that foregrounds the complexity of the situation on the ground. This tension

becomes particularly visible and problematic whenever journalists in disaster zones have to

rely on humanitarian staff as fixers that provide access to local people and as primary news

sources (Rothmyer, 2011; Cottle & Nolan, 2007; Franks, 2008).

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The effects of perceived relievability undoubtedly also favor the plights of individuals.

Research shows that audiences are much less inclined to donate money when presented with

statistical information about potential beneficiaries than when given descriptions of an

individual victim. One study even showed that when the description of an individual victim is

complemented with general statistical information, average donations drop are lower than if

such additional information is not provided (Small, Loewenstein & Slovic, 2007). Not only do

we prefer stories about individuals whose suffering seem to be relievable, it appears that we

are actually put off if they are accompanied by statistics about the nature and overwhelming

scale of the problem at hand.

5 New Technologies, New Questions?

When surveying the field, it becomes evident that research on media and distant suffering has

mostly focused on traditional mass media and has had a slow start in reflecting on the

consequences of contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The ubiquity of the Internet in many countries across the globe affords the production and

distribution of user generated content by citizens during crises. This has in some cases resulted

in an endless stream of pictures (even before international journalists arrive) offering first-

hand accounts of what the disaster amounts to. While some promising work has started to

explore the implications of these trends in disaster coverage (see Cooper, 2011), if and to what

extent these forms of amateur reporting might contribute to decreased distance and facilitate

compassionate engagement with the sufferers deserves more empirical attention.

Furthermore, contemporary ICTs, in particular social media, enable humanitarian

organizations to engage (new) audiences, for example by means of online petitions and

persuasive ‘serious gaming’. Facilitating this form of online engagement is not without

controversies, as forcefully demonstrated by the rise and fall of the Kony2012 campaign video

by American NGO Invisible Children (Madianou, 2012; von Engelhardt & Jansz, 2014; Nothias,

2012). Critics regard online activism for a ‘good cause’ as just another form of online

‘slacktivism’, i.e. a low-intensity, low-commitment and low-impact form of political

engagement. Ardent skepticism of online activism, voiced by authors such as Evgeny Morozov,

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contend that it is not authentic engagement with a cause that makes people sign online

petitions and join Facebook groups. Rather, “much of it happens for reasons that have nothing

to do with one’s commitment to ideas and politics in general, but rather to impress one’s

friends” (Morozov, 2012, p. 186).

6 Looking Ahead: Avenues for Future Research

Lilie Chouliaraki (2006) and others have successfully revived academic curiosity for the

relationships between media depictions of distant others in pain and the cultivation of a

cosmopolitan position towards that other. This trend within media & communication studies

(see Ong, 2009) meets with pleas for the social sciences in general to not merely document

but critically engage with human suffering in all its forms (see Iain Wilkins’ chapter in this

volume).

In this chapter, we aimed to further reflect on the media’s role as storytellers of suffering and

presented four dimensions that are meant to structure and guide future research efforts in

the field.

With respect to distance, more research is needed to explore what kind of imagery has the

potential to increase the spectator’s sense of proximity. This could, for example, achieved by

deliberately highlighting connections and interdependencies between the life world of those

who are watching and that of those who are being watched. Here, current practices of

journalistic domestication (Clausen, 2004) might provide a fruitful area for future

investigation. For example, in their coverage of the 2010 Pakistan floods, Dutch public

television news repeatedly linked the distant suffering to the devastating floods in the

Netherlands in 1953 (Verdonschot & Von Engelhardt, 2012). As trivial and far-fetched as they

might appear at times, these attempt to bridge the experiential gaps between ‘us’ and ‘them’

might not at all be trivial, as “[s]tressing our common vulnerability can be a powerful tool for

cosmopolitan education and encouraging cosmopolitan empathy that extends beyond the

realm of the nation state.” (Pantti, Wahl-Jorgensen & Cottle, 2012, p. 136).

16

In a similar vein, but in relation to actuality, empirical attention should be paid to the question

to what extent and under which circumstances distant suffering runs the risk of being

fictionalized – and what kind of representations can counter this.

Research relating to scale has unveiled that feelings of compassion are most easily incited by

individual cases. But that does not necessarily imply that human beings are insensitive to mass

suffering. Research in collaboration with news reporters could help to develop the types of

journalistic narrative and visualization that have the potential to counter a collapse of

compassion and encourage audiences to feel and care even for large distant groups.

Also with respect to relievability, more research is needed that investigates how different

ways of representing humanitarian crisis affect perceived self-efficacy and the degree to which

suffering is seen as inevitable, rather than relievable.

On a more general level, we believe that future research on the question of how audiences

respond to and make sense of distant suffering can find inspiration and conceptual aids in

works of moral philosophy and moral psychology that draw out attention to the non-rational

aspects of everyday morality. Philosophers such as Peter Singer and Peter Unger have argued

- and in the case of Unger shown empirically - that the moral compasses that guide our

attitudes and actions towards distant sufferers cannot be reconciled with widely accepted

moral principles. Similarly, within moral psychology, we find heightened attention for ‘moral

intuitions’ thus moving away from the notion that moral judgments are the result of rational

elaboration (Haidt, 2003). As they force us to face the circumstantial factors that affect how

we relate to those in need, these findings also provide a strong rationale for further

explorations into the role that representations of human suffering have in cultivating

sensibilities of moral responsibility towards distant others.

6 Concluding Remarks

The research discussed at the beginning of this chapter has shown that the coverage of distant

suffering in Western media is generally described as decontextualized reporting that

emphasizes the helplessness and passivity of local victims. At the same time, it has also

become clear that there is no reason to revert to general pessimism, as audience

17

interpretations and responses are diverse in nature. The four dimensions that we presented

above draw attention to specific characteristics of representation that can allow or disallow

audiences to engage with distant suffering in a meaningful manner. By no means do we mean

to argue, however, that individuals will respond uniformly when faced with a particular

representation of distant suffering. Rather, and in line with Chouliaraki, we contend that

depictions of suffering can create spaces that allow audiences to cultivate and act out different

forms of cosmopolitanism. The question of whether and how this actually happens, is

determined by factors that lie outside of representation.

18

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