The psychology of care?

[bindeweede]

The bloodied, dust-covered image of Omran Daqneesh, a 5-year-old Syrian boy from Aleppo whose family home was destroyed in an air strike, is making headlines and heartache in ways that the five-year-old conflict rarely does.

The video of the child's rescue and other images both affected me strongly. Am I a victim of media manipulation? I don't know.

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/08/wh ... cienceofus

[Tony.Williams]

I have to say that I am mystified by the reported public reaction both to this and to the boy who drowned while crossing from Turkey to Egypt some months ago.

We all know that kids have been getting killed or injured for years in these incidents. What did people imagine that the victims look like? Or did they just not bother to use their imagination?

Seeing photos of the victims makes no significant difference to the disgust I feel about what is happening, since they look pretty much as I would expect them to look.

[chaggle]

One thing I find puzzling is the notion that it's wrong or somehow sinister that the media are quick to report upon tragedy close to home in Britain or France or Belgium while giving similar incidents in more foreign parts less coverage.

It goes without saying that all suffering anywhere is actually of equal importance but it seems natural to me that the closer to home the disaster the more affected we will be.

Similarly, I would grieve the loss of a close relative more than the loss of someone far away that I didn't know.

Still I suppose it allows the people who say 'hundreds of people were killed yesterday in Africa but you didn't see that reported on the front page did you?' to feel superior to the rest of us.