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Shakirah Hunter<\/p>\nShakirah Hunter<\/p>\n
Durban Kwa Zulu Natal has been ravaged by different difficulties over the last year. The looting last year brought immense national reaction as well as international reaction. Then came the floods and we all were moved once again. This weekend we saw horrific pictures on social media once again. Wealthy suburbs cut off and huge holes in roads cutting off people from basic necessities and immediately unable to leave their homes. Mass evacuations were underway and people on social media expressed their fears of ever coming through this financial battering once again.<\/p>\n
As we get the information coming in and we see the news and the extensive damage that our fellow South Africans have been enduring \u2013 many Durbanites have lamented the lack of empathy from people across the country. \u201cYou have to be here to understand it\u201d, said most social media users. Now comparatively, we here in Johannesburg and the remainder of South Africa have been unable to fathom the reality on the ground and most of us have come to a point of apathy and lack empathy in our consumption of this news. We have been constantly bombarded with the worry and pain and difficulty of our fellow South Africans \u2013 but we have come to this point that we have news fatigue, and we are unable to feel the pain of our fellow humans are undergoing.<\/p>\n
We do feel the pain and difficulty yet at the same time we find ourselves saying things like \u2013 \u201cwhat\u2019s happening in Durban?\u201d And some people joking that that the people of Durban are experiencing the punishment of Allah due to something that they are doing. The statements that keep coming through seem to be very dismissive of the intensive damage and difficulty that they are facing.<\/p>\n
Consuming bad news can break away our feelings of empathy:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Bad news is a little like chocolate or takeaway \u2013 something that in excess is not good for us.<\/p>\n \u201cOur consciousness is naturally and automatically drawn to stories about danger. We are hard-wired to detect risk in our environment. This is sometimes called a \u2018negativity bias\u2019. It means our attention gravitates to news or media stories that are about suffering, death and risk.\u201d<\/p>\n We tense when we see a headline that is anxiety-provoking but then quickly scroll to the next one.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cFrom a neurophysiological perspective,\u201d says Titov, \u201cour brains light up whenever we perceive a threat, something that could potentially harm us or damage us or our loved ones. We tense when we see a headline that is anxiety-provoking but then quickly scroll to the next one.<\/p>\n Going down the scroll hole<\/u><\/strong> \u2013 combating the fixation on negative events without feeling.<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Bad news is so pervasive it has lately developed its own language to reflect the way we fixate on negative events, scroll the bad stuff, and check feeds at every opportunity \u2026 \u201cNews fatigue\u201d, \u201cdoom scrolling\u201d, \u201czombie scrolling\u201d, \u201cgoing down the scroll hole\u201d are now part of our lives and can really impact how we react to the difficulties of others.<\/p>\n Sensationalizing bad news without feeling empathy?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n We know that generating empathy is difficult, because it requires people to spend emotional energy that they\u2019re usually reluctant to spend. And we also know that audiences can easily suffer from \u201cempathy fatigue\u201d when confronted with story after story, image after image, which tries to move them with tales of the suffering of others.<\/p>\n