Idea Entry #2: Fatigue

More specifically from there, Compassion Fatigue.

“‘While we debate how to improve our health care system, build the information superhighway, and protect the spotted owl, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - War, Disease, Famine, and Death - gallop. . . leaving behind scenes of unspeakable horror which occasionally burst onto our TV screens or momentarily claim our attention.’

J. R. Bullington

‘No Easy Solutions to End Suffering’

The Virginian Pilot, September 4, 1994”

Moeller, Susan D. "Riding With the Four Horsemen." Introduction. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999. eBook.

“Compassion fatigue reinforces simplistic, formulaic coverage. If images of starving babies worked in the past to capture attention for a complex crisis of war, refugees, and famine, then starving babies will headline the next difficult crisis.”

Moeller, Susan D. "Riding With the Four Horsemen." Introduction. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999. eBook.

Self-Study Unit 3: Photography & Trauma IV. Traumatic Stress and the News Audience

"Self-Study Unit 3: Photography & Trauma | Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma."Main | Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. DART Center for Journalism and Trauma. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.

This article I found online discusses the scientific effects behind compassion fatigue, but it also does a good job of going into the photojournalism and media side of it as well. This particular section talks about the science and then gives tips to photojournalists. I particularly found it interesting that when you look at the brain as someone is being shown images, there is a visible response on the scans. So our brains seem to have a section dedicated to apathy and similar responses. The article also discusses the effect of media coverage and the Columbine Shootings, as well as September 11th. It suggests that people with PTSD related to the events may react in a common way because they are all linked by the event.

“The field of mass communication study is largely build upon “effects research,” the study of how media content (e.g., movies, newspaper articles, propaganda, television programs, etc.) affects some segment of the population. This research goes back about three-quarters of a century and has yielded a wide range of useful findings. The most important caveat that has emerged over the decades is that not everyone is affected in the same way by the same “message” at the same time. In other words, there is no “magic bullet” effect.”

“The public response to the genocide in Rwanda was reticent, not because people did not feel discomfort — some complained about the graphic images in newspapers and magazines — but because they felt helpless and thus not compelled to respond in a concerted manner. Certainly there were calls to relief organizations, but not in the volume one might expect given the severity of the situation.

In contrast, when cholera broke out in Rwandan refugee camps and were reported by the international news media, calls to relief agencies poured in. This was something that people felt they could meaningfully contribute to; their dollars could buy real relief for suffering people, if only a blanket or rations.”

This term came up in my meeting Monday, and I think that it will influence how I go about choosing my subject for my project, and how to execute it while not being cliche with it. I want to hold people’s attention with my work, I don’t want them to just cast it aside as irrelevant or meaningless.

What is Compassion Fatigue?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VubmnvCl9sk

Description from Youtube.com video: “Compassion Fatigue can develop because even though working with suffering people is rewarding it can also be hard to take sometimes. In this webcast Dr. Frank Ochberg explains the causes, symptoms and methods for coping with compassion fatigue.”