Free Essay. Distant Suffering' of Others Produce a Sense of Compassion

Each year, the media plays a significant role in covering international disasters globally. In most cases, accidents are a priori to distant suffering and affect different cultures and ethnicities (Joye 2015). Thus, the media plays a significant role in publicizing global plights through media reports. Journalists have covered everything from natural disasters, causing death and destruction to terrorism, leading to the killing of innocent people in broad daylight. For instance, the Nice Bastille terror attack led to a different reaction from the viewers when a man drove a truck into the people celebrating Bastille Day (Furusjo 2017, cited by Klint Olsson 2017). This argumentative essay will focus on various disasters and terrorism and how media coverage has invited the audience to care and feel compassion for the victims (Chouliaraki 2006). The issue of sympathetic response to distance suffering has been an agenda for public debate in recent years. Thus, the essay supports the concept that television viewing creates a sense of social responsibility toward distance sufferers. The first part of the essay constitutes a brief overview of social media's role in portraying human suffering in distant countries. The second part discusses audience responses and ways in which they tend to care.

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Compassion is defined as a painful emotion shown towards another person suffering a misfortune (Höijer 2004). News media reporting on distance suffering should invoke sympathy to the viewers. According to Höijer (2004), spectators should have cognitive feelings that other people suffering are severe, and they do not deserve the plight they are experiencing. For the spectator to be compassionate, the news report by the press must place the suffering individual in humanized and challenging circumstances. Compassion plays a significant role in eliciting an emotional response from the viewers to the plight of distant sufferers. Compassion relates both the spectators and distant others, allowing them to recognize that they are all part of the human race, regardless of where they are and what they are doing.

The new media play a significant role in informing the audience of public distance suffering. Besides, the media play a vital role in inviting the press to feel compassionate for people experiencing a disaster (Chouliaraki 2006; 2008). According to Silverstone (2007), in a world where polarization and demonization are increasing, the media play a significant role regarding tin depicting the shape of suffering to its viewers. In other words, global news media presentation should be regarded as Mediapolis, a single space of political and social communication, since the audience perceptions of one another can be shaped accordingly or destroyed (ibid). Silverstone argues that if the audience lacks understanding of media significance and fails to criticize the daily functioning of the press, the world is likely to fail to understand and respect each other, especially those who rely on mediated platforms such as Facebook (ibid). As such, the media has a significant role in educating society and nourishing the audience on their perception of each other. Currently, news media rely on social media to distribute daily news, with Facebook positioning itself to accomplish current consumption (Mediavision, 2016). Unlike traditional news channels, social media provides a different view of distance suffering experiences. The spectators can spectate on the distant suffering, and their response was seen (Boltanski 1999). Besides, viewers encourage each other through the mediation platforms to act compassionately towards distant sufferers.

News reporters have essential value in evoking compassion among the viewers. For instance, designing the narration of disasters or conflicts should have compassion as a value. According to Joye (2015), the news value established by writers, editors, and journalists should be genuine and not manufactured. Besides, journalists have a critical role to play and decide how to prompt compassion for the spectators. If the misfortune is war, the publishers have a challenging task in determining how to establish the news and confer compassion. Among proximity, distance, and level of conflict, compassion also plays a significant role in determining whether a story goes through mediation or print.

Journalism, in the presence of disaster, can establish compassion by showing components of empathy (Chouliaraki 2006). While reporting to the audience, a journalist can employ cognitive empathy to see the world from someone else perspective (Gluck 2016). Journalists, while reporting on distance suffering, practice behavioral compassion by showing the reality. For instance, when reporting on the plight of a family who lost almost all their members to COVID 19, the journalist might let someone cry. Besides, journalists may practice affective empathy where they physically and emotionally experience the difficulties experienced by another person (ibid). The media report on distance suffering might not only invoke compassion from the viewers but also political governments. For instance, CNN has a significant effect on how the world responds to other people's crises. During the Bosnia war, CNN created awareness of a little girl, Irma, who was hospitalized in Sarajevo in 1993 (Rozell and Mayer 2008). A shell splinter injured the girl, and she had lost her mother during the wars. The news aired by CNN greatly impacted John Major, the prime minister and former prime minister, Margret Thatcher. Both executives competed to demand an air bridge that could fly injured casualties from the overwhelmed Sarajevo. Besides, other European countries also welcomed victims and refugees of the Bosnia war.

When the audience or spectators are presented with distance suffering through medial channels, they are expected to respond with compassion (Höijer 2004). For individuals who meet with passion, the media must portray the victim as helpless and innocent (ibid). Chouliaraki (2006) defined audience compassionate action to be either cosmopolitanism or communitarianism. Cosmopolitanism's sympathetic audience responds to the distance suffering of other people who are not part of their community, while Communitarianism's audience act for suffering proximal to their community (ibid).

According to Boltanski (1999), a compassionate audience responded to distance suffering through denunciation, sentiments, and aesthetics. Denunciation (pamphleteering) is when the audience responds to distance suffering from resentment and anger towards the perpetrator. The viewers and audience might also react with compassion sentiments towards the sufferer or the benefactor. When the audience responds aesthetically, they react by comforting the victims that the suffering will come to an end (ibid). The response outline by Boltanski (1999) has been adopted and update by Mette Mortensen and Hans-Jörg Trenz (2016) and used in a dynamic study in group witnessing. From a social media perspective, the audience's response to social distance suffering can be emotional through sentiment expression, critical questioning, or reflexives (Mortensen and Trenz 2016, p, 351). The compassionate response was based on pictures of an 11 years Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, who drowned in September 2015 (ibid). The compassionate act of the audience helped build a society based on distance viewing and humanitarian politics. The media reporting on distance suffering determining and shapes the proper distance the audience should encounter while showing compassion to the suffering (Silverstone 2007). Identifying and understanding the distance sustain a moral, emotional, and social bond relation with others (ibid). Silverstone argued that compassionate actions should be unconditional and cannot be based on the idea that one's compassionate actions require the other to reciprocate the same.

Viewers can also view and react to social distance suffering by showing tender-hearted compassion towards the victims. When spectators show tender-hearted compassion, they express the feeling of pity and empathy towards the sufferers. For instance, a viewer may give sentiments such as "It breaks my heart when I see refugees […]" (Höijer 2004, p.522). During COVID 19 pandemic outbreak, many, if not all, countries have been worst hit and experience massive deaths daily. United States, Brazil, Spain, and Italy are among the worst countries globally, with more than thirty thousand deaths. In such a situation, amidst these dark times, people who are less affected by the pandemic can only show tender-hearted compassion to these countries.

The audience of media reports can respond to distance suffering through blame-filled compassion. Blame-filled compassion is when the audience expresses feelings of kindness to the victims, expressing blame to the perpetrators. "'I became angry when I saw the many innocent people and civilians who died […]" or "'He is a terrible man, a Psychopath" (Höijer 2004, p.523). For instance, George Perry Floyd Jr., an African-American man who was killed by police during an arrest in Minneapolis, led to widespread protest in many parts of the United States and Internationally. In response to the suffering of blacks through police brutality, a worldwide movement "Black Lives Matter" was started showing compassion to the Floyd family while blaming Trump's government for encouraging racial chauvinism.

The spectator of distance suffering also experiences shame-filled compassion. In such situations, the audience feels ambivalence over the fact other people are suffering while they are safe. Höijer and Olausson (2012) give an example "I get furious with myself because I do nothing" or "I had such a bad conscience, and I almost did not manage to watch any more terrible scenes on television" (ibid). According to Chouliaraki (2008), the Ethiopian hunger aired by the media as emergency news is an example of shame blame compassion. The world experienced distance suffering, which led to shame and compassion. Thousands of viewers sacrificed their meals to end hunger in Ethiopia.

Höijer and Olausson (2012) discuss powerlessness-filled compassion experienced by spectators of distance suffering. The compassion arises from spectator awareness of their limits of elevating the pain. For instance, when disaster happens, such as the current pandemic outbreak, people experiencing distant suffering can give donations but do nothing to stop the victims from suffering. "You can of course give some money but that will not stop the war," (Höijer 2004).

While reporting on distant suffering, the media uses mediation to develop compassion. Silverstone (2007) argues that mediation platforms such as social media act to overcome distance in communication while also sympathizing with distance suffering. Besides, mediation does not only help overcome cultural and moral distance with others at a distance, but also help in the management of moral distance. More importantly, a physical or material connection does not certainly provide social, ethical, or cultural connection required (ibid). More importantly, mediation allows other users to view others' reactions based on the comment, which might influence collective compassion (Mortensen and Trenz 2016). Thus, Mortensen and Trenz (2016) state that "social media reception should be understood as a public performance, in which users manifest their sentiments, dispositions, and motivations and make them mutually understandable" (p.347). Besides, mediation is an excellent avenue for media to report on distance suffering as it allows people to act together and unites when there is a specific issue (ibid).