Audience Responses to Death in the News

Abstract

So far, this book has examined the processes of selection, production and transmission of news reports of death. As we have seen, there exists quite a variety of studies into the way in which the news media approach the issue. At the heart of many such studies, however, have been not only the actual messages, but also a concern over the meanings that audiences may extract from such reports. And while empirical research has shown that death is rarely displayed in graphic detail in the news, some have argued that there are too many such images, which are driven by the voyeuristic demands of the audience. The result, they believe, is an audience that cares less about others. This notion of compassion fatigue in Western society has been a topic of much debate as of late. The term compassion fatigue actually goes back to earlier notions of burnout among trauma workers, who experienced feelings of avoidance and other secondary stress symptoms as a result of their work (Figley, 1995). And while this concept has been applied to measure traumatic stress in news audiences, the term has also been adopted by media scholars. In a media studies context, compassion fatigue has come to be seen as a process of ‘becoming so used to the spectacle of dreadful events, misery or suffering that we stop noticing them’ (Tester, 2001, p. 13).