Close, but not close enough? Audience’s reactions to domesticated distant suffering in international news coverage

Abstract

Journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer to the audience and thus make them more relevant and appealing; however, knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions toward domesticated news is lacking. Central to this study is understanding how an audience makes use of domestication strategies in viewing and reacting to mediated distant suffering. Earlier text-based research has found several ways of domesticating distant suffering that can invite an audience to care. Building further on this media-centered study, 10 focus groups reveal a two-flow model of domestication, consisting of first-level domestication on the production side by journalists and second-level domestication, in which audience members themselves use strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering.