Staying up with the blue screen glow
Apr. 30th, 2024 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I was watching a Youtube interview yesterday, and a question by the interviewer, and the interviewee's response clarified and crystalised something that has long been frustrating me about the way a lot of people communicate about crises, causes and injustices they consider important.
The interview was about US military and financial aid to Ukraine, and the interviewer asked why there was this constant background mood music about 'war fatigue' among Americans who are not, themselves, doing any of the fighting in this war — but really the specifics of the question aren't important. The interviewee's response is applicable in many, many different contexts, though.
She said that the issue isn't so much 'war fatigue,' but rather compassion fatigue and how it is fueled by media framing and coverage: constant, blow-by-blow, real-time coverage of terrifying catastrophes and horrific atrocities relating to an overwhelming number of wars, injustices, and things like pandemics and climate change — while simultaneously making people consuming this material feel like they have no agency. One understandable response is to disengage with the news altogether, leading to the 'war fatigue' described above.
But it was the 'making people feel as if they have no agency' that caused something to click into place for me: a more effective way to deal with this problem is to encourage people to engage with the news in different ways (ditch the real-time clickbaity live feed coverage and do the equivalent of reading a physical newspaper, watching a single daily news bulletin, reading/watching/listening to long-form commentary and analysis after a certain amount of time has passed from the events being analysed), and to communicate in ways that nurtures a sense of agency in people.
Because the truth is, we do have agency, at least if we live in (albeit flawed) democratic countries. (The situation is of course very different in totalitarian or authoritarian countries, in which individuals do have agency, but the risk in excercising it is so much greater.) And there are ways to communicate — if one is a person outraged by a particular series of atrocities or injustices — that can remind potentially like-minded people of their agency in the situation and encourage them to exercise it. Maybe as individuals or as part of a grassroots collective movement their agency isn't enough to stop the specific atrocities or injustices happening, but the more people who can be encouraged to act in this way, the greater the chance is that they can push back against the tide. (I remember here an article I read a year or so ago which argued that the best way to respond to a frightening situation is to do something physical, with other people, that allows you to exercise agency in the face of the scary situation; the example used was a massive uptick in Taiwanese citizens signing up for classes in combat medicine in response to some belligerent behaviour by China, I'm reminded also of the residents of Kyiv who took part in an impromptu class led by chemistry students at one of the universities in making molotov cocktails on the first day of the full-scale invasion. Both examples allowed the people to feel less alone, and feel like they were taking action rather than sitting in passive uncertainty.)
In contrast, there are ways to communicate — with which I've been experiencing increasing frustration since I first started recognising this as a pattern six months or so ago — which encourage a kind of overwhelmed, passive outrage: a constant stream of 'awareness raising' of atrocities (often accompanied by accusatory comments such as 'why is no one else sharing this?') which has the overall effect of reminding people of their powerlessness and lack of agency in the situation. The 'awareness raising' seems to be the entire point of the communication: to highlight their own awareness, and to be seen to be doing so; no further actions to respond to the issue are included. A lot of the time this is unintentional (and culturally reinforced by similar behaviour within a social circle), but I also think that in many such cases, it's a deliberate attempt to make people feel disempowered, demotivated and atomised. The former I find frustrating, the latter I find quite sinister.
Since this whole post is about encouraging a sense of agency, I'd be remiss if I ended it without suggesting some concrete actions. I don't really feel that anyone here on Dreamwidth communicates in the way that I've been deploring above, but I feel certain that a lot of us have experienced it — possibly within our broader social circles, or on other social media platforms. So I guess what I would suggest for those who feel similarly to me is: try to be more alert to this pattern of communication, and its effect on your mood and ability to respond to terrible things happening in the world. Recognise its cumulative effect, try to gently discourage it if you feel people would be receptive to that — and be cautious of people treated as laudable and authoritative if this is the sole way they seem to respond to issues that they claim are important to them.
Maybe all this isn't such a lightbulb moment for you as it was to me, but I've been wrestling with these kinds of questions for quite a few years now, and something about this specific interview response made a whole lot of things click into place.
The interview was about US military and financial aid to Ukraine, and the interviewer asked why there was this constant background mood music about 'war fatigue' among Americans who are not, themselves, doing any of the fighting in this war — but really the specifics of the question aren't important. The interviewee's response is applicable in many, many different contexts, though.
She said that the issue isn't so much 'war fatigue,' but rather compassion fatigue and how it is fueled by media framing and coverage: constant, blow-by-blow, real-time coverage of terrifying catastrophes and horrific atrocities relating to an overwhelming number of wars, injustices, and things like pandemics and climate change — while simultaneously making people consuming this material feel like they have no agency. One understandable response is to disengage with the news altogether, leading to the 'war fatigue' described above.
But it was the 'making people feel as if they have no agency' that caused something to click into place for me: a more effective way to deal with this problem is to encourage people to engage with the news in different ways (ditch the real-time clickbaity live feed coverage and do the equivalent of reading a physical newspaper, watching a single daily news bulletin, reading/watching/listening to long-form commentary and analysis after a certain amount of time has passed from the events being analysed), and to communicate in ways that nurtures a sense of agency in people.
Because the truth is, we do have agency, at least if we live in (albeit flawed) democratic countries. (The situation is of course very different in totalitarian or authoritarian countries, in which individuals do have agency, but the risk in excercising it is so much greater.) And there are ways to communicate — if one is a person outraged by a particular series of atrocities or injustices — that can remind potentially like-minded people of their agency in the situation and encourage them to exercise it. Maybe as individuals or as part of a grassroots collective movement their agency isn't enough to stop the specific atrocities or injustices happening, but the more people who can be encouraged to act in this way, the greater the chance is that they can push back against the tide. (I remember here an article I read a year or so ago which argued that the best way to respond to a frightening situation is to do something physical, with other people, that allows you to exercise agency in the face of the scary situation; the example used was a massive uptick in Taiwanese citizens signing up for classes in combat medicine in response to some belligerent behaviour by China, I'm reminded also of the residents of Kyiv who took part in an impromptu class led by chemistry students at one of the universities in making molotov cocktails on the first day of the full-scale invasion. Both examples allowed the people to feel less alone, and feel like they were taking action rather than sitting in passive uncertainty.)
In contrast, there are ways to communicate — with which I've been experiencing increasing frustration since I first started recognising this as a pattern six months or so ago — which encourage a kind of overwhelmed, passive outrage: a constant stream of 'awareness raising' of atrocities (often accompanied by accusatory comments such as 'why is no one else sharing this?') which has the overall effect of reminding people of their powerlessness and lack of agency in the situation. The 'awareness raising' seems to be the entire point of the communication: to highlight their own awareness, and to be seen to be doing so; no further actions to respond to the issue are included. A lot of the time this is unintentional (and culturally reinforced by similar behaviour within a social circle), but I also think that in many such cases, it's a deliberate attempt to make people feel disempowered, demotivated and atomised. The former I find frustrating, the latter I find quite sinister.
Since this whole post is about encouraging a sense of agency, I'd be remiss if I ended it without suggesting some concrete actions. I don't really feel that anyone here on Dreamwidth communicates in the way that I've been deploring above, but I feel certain that a lot of us have experienced it — possibly within our broader social circles, or on other social media platforms. So I guess what I would suggest for those who feel similarly to me is: try to be more alert to this pattern of communication, and its effect on your mood and ability to respond to terrible things happening in the world. Recognise its cumulative effect, try to gently discourage it if you feel people would be receptive to that — and be cautious of people treated as laudable and authoritative if this is the sole way they seem to respond to issues that they claim are important to them.
Maybe all this isn't such a lightbulb moment for you as it was to me, but I've been wrestling with these kinds of questions for quite a few years now, and something about this specific interview response made a whole lot of things click into place.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-10 05:11 pm (UTC)