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Department of Media Studies

Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam

MA New Media and Digital Culture

MA - Thesis New Media

Course code: HMED/159414040

1 September 2016

Which life do you mourn and which

do you forfeit?An analysis of grief and distant suffering in online

news coverage iconography and textuality

Handed in at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of

Humanities, to complete the requirements for the title of Master of Arts (MA)

Frans Bootsman

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Index

Abstract 31 Introduction 42 Theoretical framework 52.1 Judith Butler and the grievability of life 52.2 Framing and media bias in news value theory 82.3 Cosmopolitanism in the distant suffering of Lilie Chouliaraki 112.4 Luc Boltanski’s politics of pity 152.5 Roger Silverstone’s moral maximalism and proper distance 183 Methodology and Corpus 204 Summary of the 2015 Paris attacks 224.1 Summary of the 2015 Beirut bombings 225 Iconography in the online news coverage of the Paris attacks and Beirut

bombings 245.1 Videos and footage in the online news coverage of the Paris attacks and

Beirut bombings 325.2 Iconography of the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings on Google Images 355.3 The linguistic differences in the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings headlines 396 Selective outrage or empathy gap? 417 Slavoj Žižek’s social critique after the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings 448 A deconstructivist critique of news coverage of terrorist attacks 469 Conclusion 4910 Bibliography 5111 Notes 54

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Abstract This study examines the way in which the iconography and textuality in the online news coverage took shape during the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings. These two media events happened in successive days, but didn’t receive the same amount of media coverage and online attention. In order to clarify why this is the case, this paper will look at the underlying psychology and media research behind this phenomenon. The concepts of selective grief and distant suffering will be juxtaposed with the perception of online media as a cosmopolitan entity, since this framing has often been attributed to new media platforms. Investigating how and who we decide to mourn certain lives, yet forfeit others, and what the underlying reason for this could be, should contribute towards a new understanding of grief and suffering, by which we can start to think about new ways to move towards a more egalitarian sense of mourning and a renewed sense of what we consider as specific facets of Internet culture regarding these distinct themes.

Keywords Selective grief / Distant suffering / Cosmopolitanism / Media bias / Politics of pity

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1 Introduction

On November 13th of 2015, the Western world was thrown into despair and shock by the multiple brutal terrorist attacks in the centre of Paris, killing 132 people and leaving 433 injured. Once the initial shock had subsided and people tried to continue with their normal i

routine, individuals and media outlets started to criticize the Western establishment by saying that their sympathy for victims of terrorism and outrage towards fundamentalist terrorism has been extremely biased. These outlets often referred to the double suicide ii

attack in Beirut, which was also carried out by IS two days before the Paris attacks and led to the death of 43 with 240 being injured. For instance. why did Facebook implement the iii

Temporary Profile option and the Safety Check during the Paris attacks, but didn’t do the same during the Beirut bombings? And why wasn’t the Beirut incident as heavily reported on as the Paris attacks?

These questions regarding grievability and distant suffering in online media coverage and, to some extent, social media platforms, will be the focus-point of this research paper. This paper will analyse how the grief of current weeks fits within the already existing literature about online bereavement and distress in the media. Related to the field of selective grief, this paper will discuss the news value framework and its inherent forms of bias, which can be seen as a catalyst to why some people seem to care more about one group of people in the news than another. I will be juxtaposing this with the concept of cosmopolitanism: a concept which has been very prevalent in the last couple of decades and has attributed a fair amount to online media as a global society. I will be analysing the topics of distant suffering and grievability with a case study on the online iconography in relation to the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings, especially regarding the way in which the media outlets framed the events on their respective online mediums. This topic and its themes are especially interesting because it is one of the first times a media-covered event such as Paris attacks received quite a lot of backlash regarding selective outrage, which means that analysing the divide between local suffering and distant suffering in the new media sphere, which is often heralded as a connection to the entire world’s population, could lead to a notable extension of the theoretical field. In the light of all this information, my research question will be as follows:

How do the differences in online news reporting regarding the 2015 Paris attacks and Beirut bombings relate to the psychology and spatiality of the distant spectator and the cosmopolitan perception of online news media?

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2 Theoretical framework

The following text in this chapter will outline the theoretical framework regarding the conceptual frames of selective grief, distant suffering, media bias, cosmopolitanism, politics of pity, moral maximalism and proper distance. The authors and their concepts have been rigorously chosen, not only because of their relevance to the case study of the iconography of the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings, but also because they provide a clear overview of the different modes of thought in relation to grief and suffering. Furthermore, most the authors in this chapter refer to each other’s work and either conceptualize their own concepts in line with previously made statements of other authors, or try to debunk these in the same manner. The idea of cosmopolitanism is a recurring theme in the texts of authors such as Luc Boltanski and Lilie Chouliaraki. They argue that the idea of cosmopolitanism is often attributed to the media and seen as a ‘bridging-the-gap’ type factor between communities, even though this is not reflected in day-to-day coverage of tragedies around the world. Therefore, the concept of cosmopolitanism will be touched upon in this chapter in order to present some valuable background to the theories in relation to distant suffering and politics of pity as posed by Boltanski and Chouliaraki. Other important concepts in this chapter are Roger Silverstone’s maximalism and proper distance, media bias in new value theory and Boltanski’s politics of pity in suffering. Together, these authors and their concepts will convey a thorough understanding of the different viewpoints on grief and suffering plus a valuable framework in order to examine the case study as presented in chapter five.

2.1 Judith Butler and the grievability of life

When discussing the way in which selective grief takes shape in today’s societies, the name of Judith Butler clearly stands out as one of the most prominent theorists in regard to this field of interest. According to this philosopher with a passion for psychoanalysis and gender studies, one of the most important factors in the grievability of life is the capacity to apprehend a life. This epistemological capacity is mostly dependent on life being produced according to norms that qualify it as life (Butler 2009, 3). The differentiation between the lives we can and cannot apprehend is made by ‘frames’, which organize visual experiences and generate specific ontologies of various subjects within the frame. Butler goes on to distinguish between the terms apprehending and recognising: the former is a stronger term derived from Hegel, whilst the latter is less precise since it can acknowledge

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a subject without being fully aware of its entirety. These two terms also intermingle with each other. For instance, what we are able to apprehend, surely has to do with what we can recognize to some degree. On the other hand, it is also possible to apprehend something which one has not seen or recognized before. Therefore, “apprehension can become the basis for a critique of norms of recognition (5).” In this strain of thought, one could state that recognition is based on the relation or practice between subjects. Recognisability shapes the condition in which the act of recognition can take place. Therefore, recognisability precedes recognition (5-7).

A related question to ask oneself regarding the previous material is how recognisability is to be understood and how recognition is to be framed. To answer these questions, Butler refers to the on-going debate regarding the fetus: by which stage do we count something as life? The fact that these debates exist, and continue to exist, does not imply that life and death are direct consequences of discourse. Rather, it implies that there is no life and no death without a relation to some frame (7). The phrase “to be framed” in English is quite a complex one. In relation to the pending case study, the frame that seeks to contain, convey and determine what is seen is most interesting for this paper. Butler feels that type of framing relies on the condition of reproducibility in order to succeed. This reproducibility entails that the frame is constantly separated from the content when it tries to give a definitive organization of the content it tries to frame. Because of its temporal logic, the frame moves from place to place whilst the content can be taken for granted in one instance and be criticized in the next (10).

In regard to the apprehension of the precariousness of life, Butler finds that the notion of precariousness refers to the vulnerability innate in every human life due to the fact that every human will eventually perish due to natural causes or manmade destruction (13). Not every life possesses the same precariousness, and the level of precariousness can be influenced by normative and institutional settings in which specific lives are located. Social and political forces also play an important role in this process due to the fact that they forge multiple constructions which make life possible (23). The main reason individuals experience different levels of precariousness, is due to their varying statuses in the ranks of social recognition. This is what Butler constitutes as precarity, which eventually determines whose life is potentially grievable and whose lives will be burdened with lower economic conditions and other stressful conditions that are often politically induced (25). In relation to this process of the perception of precariousness, Butler states that the frame of recognition is not only dependent on apprehension, but also intelligibility. This means that a life has to fit a certain preconception of what one constitutes as life.

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Otherwise, this life cannot be recognized as such (7). Each body does share a certain level of precariousness, which can also lead people to feel threatened by others. From a Hegelian perspective, these shared conditions in times of war often do not lead to a mutual understanding and reciprocal recognition, but quite the opposite: exploitation of groups of people, who’s lives are deemed ungrievable. Butler argues that these lives are forfeited in advance, because people feel these lives are a danger to the status quo that they are trying to protect. Sometimes, deaths are even rationalized due to the fact that populations feel that the loss of these lives are necessary (31).

With regards to the manner in which media outlets cover various tragedies differently, it is safe to state that mankind has not yet grasped the ability to let all lives matter equally. Butler asks herself who she feels responsible for. Does she identify with a nation, territory, language or culture? Can one only be responsible for those who are like me or recognize me in that sense? In times of war, there has often been a strong sense of “we”, where we consider whose lives we mourn and whose we don’t (36). According to anthropologist Talal Asad, our moral responses to tragedies are regulated by certain types of interpretative frameworks. For instance, when lives are lost due to state-sponsored war, we often don’t mourn those deaths because we don’t link those tragedies to dishonesty and tragedy, but with unfortunate circumstances. When a radical group of extremists claim the lives of completely innocent people, our affect regarding these deaths change (Asad 24). Asad goes on to say that how we feel about others, is in part conditioned by the way we interpret everything that happens around us. These feelings are often affected by interpretative schemes that we do not fully understand (Asad 33; Butler 41).

Not only does Butler pinpoint a certain hypocrisy and inequity regarding the grievability of life, because she also suggests a way of thinking about “global responsibility” in times of war (Butler 36). In regard to “framing”, Butler suggests that we break free from certain frames, so that we recognize new life and let new frames install themselves, making the emergence of new apprehension possible. One might hope that our frame of recognition could just be enlarged to fit a cosmopolitan society often ascribed to the 21st century ideals in Western countries. Butler sees the current framing as a reflexive process; a fact which suits the nature of the case concerning the Paris attacks quite well and could lead to interesting insights in relation to the framing for such particular events. In fact, Judith Butler wrote an open letter on her publishers website, entitled ‘Mourning is the law’. In it, she asks herself whether we are truly grieving or are we submitting to increasingly militarized state power and suspended democracy? How does the latter work more easily when it is sold as the former (Butler 2015)? Ironically, she

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concludes that the enemy has attacked France’s version of freedom, by which the French authority have decided to implement restriction on the same freedom they say they are trying to protect; the police are getting more militarised, the freedom of assembly is being violated and state of emergency gives authorities the license to raid any house without an actual search-warrant. Butler argues that one of the reasons, news outlets and common people seem to barely acknowledge the bombings in Beirut, is because most people find themselves in an impasse, in which they find it hard to grasp the situations at hand. She begins to coin a new notion of grief which can figure out why we choose to let some events affect us and others not. She calls this transversal grief, which Jorg Haiser defined as “not grief-shaming playing off one terrible incident against another, but an ability to share grief across the divides, which in turn is a precondition to be able to go from impasse to thinking again (Heiser 2015).

2.2 Framing and media bias in news value theory

When we hold Butler’s views to be self-evident, there is a clear link to be made between the recognition and/or apprehension regarding another person’s life in relation to grief and the way in which media platforms frame certain news coverage or create medium-specific factors by which communication between people is regulated. The theory that determines which news is worthy of certain coverage and the potential bias that comes with these types of decisions, is referred to as news value theory. One of the key aspects of this theory is that a news item must be meaningful for the audience to become news (Ruigrok and van Attenveldt 72). Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge, two of the pioneers in this field, found that proximity was one of the most important factors in judging whether an event was meaningful for a desired audience. When getting back to the aspect of framing, we can clearly see a type of framing in the Paris attacks when we see a polarization of society with Western cultures on the one hand and Islamic extremists on the other. In the context of events such as 9/11 and the Paris attacks, some theorists have argued that the national public sphere is slowly being replaced by Marshall McLuhan’s concept of “global village”, which entails that every citizens receives the same type of information, making the media networks function on a global level (69). This global village would lead to a new information age whereby everyone would constantly be in contact with each other (West 432). On the other hand, other theorists claim the domestic view doesn’t seem to be replaced by an international view, but that global events are often integrated into local discourses (Volkmer 239). In their research based on associative

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framing, Nel Ruigrok and Wouter van Atteveldt investigated whether events such as the London bombing, 9/11 and the Madrid attacks were mainly framed in a local or global way in several national media systems (Ruigrok and van Attenveldt 68). What they found is that there was not such existence of a global village in relation to the coverage of these types of media events. Proximity is still the most definitive factor in news value. This is only partially true for the specific framing of the news. After an initial global report on an event, the framing will eventually shift towards the national and/or local consequences this event brings about (Ruigrok and van Attenveldt 85).

In relation to the field of new media, the connectivity of the Internet has often been heralded as a positive thing. On the other hand, there has been a growing debate amongst social scientists when analysing the cognitive and emotional effect various parts of the Internet is having on its users. This is where we find an interesting contradiction: the Internet is supposed to highlight connectivity between the people that utilise it, but can also have the opposite effect whereby relationships offline and online don’t relate to one another, which can lead to social isolation (Biggs 29). Modern media technologies are often credited to have torn down all sorts of geographic boundaries, but is that really the case? From a traditional cross-cultural perspective in psychology, theorists often made a division between the individualistic West and the collective East when looking at the influence culture has on media ecology. Eventually, cultural psychologists started to differentiate more variations in culture, which were based on self-perception, or some cases, the self-construal. This concept can yet again be divided into two variations: independent and interdependent. The former is based in personal emotions with an internal emphasis, while the latter is based on being more open towards outsiders and emphasizing relationships with others. According to Biggs, these two variations of culture don’t necessarily have to be a division, but also have a potential overlap. Generally, people in Western societies mostly have a self-perception that remains stable in different positions, while collectivist societies would try to view themselves more in the light of certain similarities they share with a group they can identify with (Biggs 31). These similarities can be very on-the-nose or relatively redundant in comparison. For instance, I can be part of a religious group or, for a time, I might temporarily be part of a group having a bad case of the flu. These contexts are what create a person’s self-construal. One can be part of many cultures; limiting oneself to just one would seem to be extremely limited to one’s personality, although this is not inconceivable (Heatherton and Baumeister 94).

Cleary, the Internet is bound to have an impact on the psychology of the self. Biggs argues that collectivist and individualist aspects of culture are starting to intermingle;

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creating a culture that is more varied. An interesting question to ask is what kind of culture we would adhere to regarding the culture visible on the Internet. Does the Internet provide more intimate spaces for people who aren’t that well connected to the bigger cities, or does it provide a sense of anonymity for the metropolitan citizens of the world? Do we view the Internet as a place where none of our details are safe and private, or do we like the fact that every person can come knocking on our respective online door at any time? In doing so, Biggs juxtaposes the concept of the global village next to the urban jungle; a term which invokes a far more cluttered and unregulated view of the Internet (Biggs 32).

Ellen Ullman wrote an interesting piece on some of the aforementioned issues regarding the valuation of different types of cultures. She argues that the current framing of the Internet leads people to become increasingly narcissistic. This trend can, for instance, be seen in the way platforms and software name certain spaces on the computer for its user: My Preferences, My Data, My Frontpage etc. The medium therefore forces upon its user a singularity of being, whereby it has become extremely important to individualise oneself in the new media sphere. This extreme personalisation can lead to a decreased social responsibility, which leads users to experience a new existence. She calls this “the ultimate suburbanization of existence.” In other words, only the information and other persons in our personalised media sphere will be able to penetrate our otherwise fairly isolated Internet bubbles (Ullman 31). Additionally, the Internet has become the most divisive media form which can deliver a type of personalising, which is unmatched by any other medium. This is especially visible in the way we currently absorb news. Social media has impacted mainstream media in the sense that they have had to adapt to swift changes in the technological landscape. Platforms such as Twitter have invariably changed the ways in which journalism conducts research and surveys suggest that not only the creation, but also the discussion and sharing of the news is increasingly taking place on social media (Hermida et al. 1). Although websites and social media networks have often been described as the newest form of the public sphere, one can also look at the construct of such media outlets where they seem to fall short in spreading certain messages or news. For instance, concern has grown towards the limitation of the news caused by the narrow stream of information people receive via their social media platforms, although recent research suggest that users feel that their social circle gives them a more broad sense of the news than a traditional media outlet would provide them (Hermida et al. 6).

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2.3 Cosmopolitanism in the distant suffering of Lilie Chouliaraki

In recent times, there has been an intense debate about the concept of the global village and whether this idea has resulted in a cosmopolitan society. The main argument for the global village is that transnational networks led to more connectivity, which in turn shortened the distance between all lives on this planet as well as a new sense of responsibility towards distant others (Chouliaraki, Distant suffering in the media 2). But how is the suffering of others made visible? What kind of awareness and responsibility do we pertain in regard to certain events? Here it is important to differentiate the manner in which individuals and the media manage the visibility of suffering, even though there is a definite connection between the two due to the invariable influence of the media on the individual.

The media has a performative value in this sense: the words and imagery they choose to utilize, fill in the gaps of individuals which they think of, but are incapable of experiencing. This plays a big role in where we stand in relation to the suffering of others. This is not only the case with conventional old-fashioned media, but also with events as public spectacles as they play out on social media networks. Contributors to social media routinely choose to respond to a certain event and leave another to the side. A logical question following this statement is what kind of imagined communities we belong to and whether we can link this to a global village or reproduce a western community easily fatigued by distant others (4)?

Journalism invariably addresses a certain audience or a community of people. The news perceived through the lens of the media can at often times be detached from emotion and very descriptive by nature. Even though, it does have the potential to create a society of intimacy by leaving an open window for our ‘own’ suffering whilst ignoring the suffering outside of our periphery and our reach of responsibility. Chouliaraki argues that these feelings lead to the creation of communitarian publics, which cause a type of global intimacy. The two types of news stories that form communitarian media publics, are divided into adventure news and ecstatic news. The former is very factual and emotionless. At times, these news pieces are accompanied with representations of information such as maps, which lead to an abstraction of the situation at hand. Because there is no imagery, there is also no contextualization of any suffering that might have occurred in relation to the news piece. Other techniques used in adventure news are the long shot, which universalizes the suffering of others. The static composition and scenery of generic landscapes lead the viewer to think that this event could have taken place

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anywhere on the planet. This type of news coverage seems to not force upon a sense of morality, but convey that the emotion of recognizing another’s suffering is a limited resource which has to be linked to events scarcely. Ecstatic news, the latter, differs from the previous in that these news events contain a rich tapestry of verbal and visual aspects, which insist commitment of the viewer and active engagement with the persons suffering within the narrative. The use of word ecstatic here refers to the break of the flow of time, whereby a minute can feel like an eternity. Another feature of ecstatic news is the uninterrupted series of new images and videos, giving the viewer the sensation of a live event that is experienced in the moment the narrative is actually happening (5-7).

These types of news stories share one common trait, namely that they address audiences as an already constituted community. Chouliaraki refers to these communities as “a community that is united in blocking out emotions for ‘irrelevant’ sufferings or united in fully empathizing with sufferers who are like ‘us’ – the safe West.” In other words, Western audiences are incapable of engaging with suffrage beyond the West, even though the ecstatic news can be seen as a justification of the global village since distant events can appear to seem very close, whilst adventure plays into the feeling of compassion fatigue - the argument that one can become tired of recurring news along the lines of terrorism and human catastrophes. What this makes abundantly clear, is that nether of the these types of news are able to connect us to the suffrage of others in the distant world, or, to put it another way, that there exists a definite bias between global and national news flows. In past, present and future media, there is a noticeable trend towards a process of selection that signifies which events of suffering concerns us as spectators the most (9-10).

On the other hand, there’s also a type of news coverage which does push our horizon further than our own community. Chouliaraki conceptualizes this type of news as ‘emergency news’, which is “a seemingly simple but subtly complex class of news, where the visibility of suffering is managed in an in-between space, one that does not completely deprive the sufferer of her humanness nor does it render this sufferer thoroughly sovereign – thoroughly humane.” The aspect of emergency is put forward in these news pieces because they have a certain call to action, a demand for progressive and swift help. This form of news confronts us with a question related to suffering as a problem that needs be solved. Therefore, the spectator inherently considers whether the suffering is important enough to enforce a type of deliberate action. When asked this question to oneself, it’s apparent that emergency news can be responsible for opening up a dialogue and the measure by which people inhibit a new space, maybe as long as a the actual length of the

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news piece, but nonetheless one whereby our concerns pass the previous limit of our own communities and communitarian bond. This might seem as a watered-down version of cosmopolitanism as coined by Kant, and perhaps also is. But, these kinds of calls of action in media imagery do lead to a form of conditional cosmopolitanism, which can be defined by the confines of the spectator such as limited possibility for effective action due to not being able to physically be present at the mediated area and not being able to make a difference in the approach to the suffering in our society (12-13).

The first use of the word cosmopolitanism can be found in the work of Diogenes of Sinope around the year 400 before Christ in ancient Greece. This word is a composition of the Greek words kosmos (world or universe) and polites (citizen of a city). When asked were Diogenes came over, he presented this now famed answer: “I am a citizen of the world.” Diogenes decided to build on these ideas and posed that every man finds himself in two different spaces at the same time; a physical space and a communal space, which every person shares with one another on the grounds of morality and values (Nussbaum 1-3).

German philosopher Kant was the first in modernity to reinvent the concept of cosmopolitanism by redefining its values. In his essay Zum ewigen Frieden, win Philosophiser Entwurf, Kant defends the cosmopolitan morality. His ideas are a derivative of Diogenes, but also the Greek stoics that followed the work of cynics like Diogenes. According to the stoics, the value of reasonableness, which can be found in every man or woman, is the basis of all human communities and intercourse. This reasonableness is the common factors that binds all people together. Stoic cosmopolitans try to assist the concrete struggles of individual persons, therefore not the problems they encounter due to their local or national identity. The follow passage by Marcus Aurelius, as cited by Martha Nussbaum, is a fitting example of this frame of mind: “It makes no difference whether a person lives here or there, provided that, wherever he lives, he lives as a citizen of the world.” The stoics also state that people don’t have to give up their nationality or local iv

identity in order to become world citizens. Just the opposite; they feel that these qualities contribute to the wealth of diversity in the cosmos that is human life. Important side-note to this is that they do acknowledge that different political values can play a part in creating wedges between certain groups of people, which leads some to being more inclined to present the image of “the others” in relation to different communities. This frame of mind leads to the stoics basing their thinking process on their sense of empathy, so they can accordingly related to people they might not necessarily agree with in order to work on/towards a common goal (6-9).

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Kant was mostly preoccupied with the role of man as an indispensable entity and a decisive factor in the course of history, as an entity that actually participates in the landscape that is planet earth. A cosmopolitan will not be frayed by his egoistic individual assumptions, but adopts a pluralistic position for the sake of humanity. Kant has written about four different types of modality regarding cosmopolitanism, which are often the subject of intense debate in relation to the theories on cosmopolitanism in the field of media, psychology and international relations. These are (1) a world federation as legal and political institutional basis of cosmopolitanism as a form of law; (2) the historical basis of cosmopolitanism related to world trade; (3) the idea of a global public sphere; and (4) the importance of the cosmopolitan culture in order to strengthen the sense of participation in relation to the unambiguous humanity (Cheah 487).

Whilst the cosmopolitan writings of Kant have had their impact on the Western world and their media coverage in the field of social, political and judicial areas, there is also a certain trend of regressing in relation to the welcoming position of the traditional cosmopolitan. The European political climate especially is recently the stage of transgression due to the hostile attitude of extreme right political parties and governments towards cultural pluralism or multiculturalism by threatening to close their borders for refugees and strip non-European immigrants of their rights. With this growing trend in the back of our minds, it’s high time we look at the concept of society and community through the lens of a radical new transnational understanding of cosmopolitanism, as embodied by the growing number of transnational communities within the borders of Europe (Baban & Rygiel 2). In fact, there is a multitude of contemporary literature written about the possible implementation of cosmopolitanism in the Western world that could bridge the dichotomy between cultural differences and a homogeneous national identity.

On the other hand, one could also make the case that the cosmopolitan Western world does not have much to offer to groups of minorities due to the fact that the imagined Western identity does not suit all various nationalities and communities. Some groups have been marginalized to the point where they are pre-emptively left out of the spheres of Western culture in people’s minds. Some radical cosmopolitans see a certain cultural identity as an obstacle in building towards a unison image of what it means to be human. In my opinion, there is often a heavy and encumbered relationship between the cultural desire of man and the quest to find the universal aspect in every person such that humanity can come together at last. Cosmopolitans have approached this relationship relatively problematically through recent times by focussing on pluralism and the differences between communities and people. The cosmopolitan desire of universal

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principles to unite certain demographics has often just pointed out the role of a universal element in a certain cultural context (5-7). Theorists such as Appiah, Delanty and Beck try to look beyond the traditional notion of cosmopolitanism towards a grassroots variation. The most prominent is this regard is transgressive cosmopolitanism, which focuses to acknowledge and conserve marginalised populations, whilst giving them the opportunity to situate themselves in the national narrative in a transformative manner (8). Others plea for a new vision on cosmopolitanism due to the fact that the globalization of the last decade has drastically changed the world and her underlying connections and networks, even though this increase on connectedness hasn’t led to any form of a cosmopolitan form of politics just yet (Cheah 491).

2.4 Luc Boltanski’s politics of pity

In his book Distant Suffering: Politics, Morality and the Media, Luc Boltanski narrows down the variation of spectatorship into two positions: abstract universalism and local particularism. The first views suffering from a global perspective and identifies with every single individual that suffers in any shape or form. The latter position views things inside their own sphere and ignores those outside of their immediate proximity, hence they carefully weigh whether suffering fits within one of their narratives or surroundings. The downside of these two extremes is that abstract universalism can lead to a disassociation and devaluation of suffering on a local level, whilst local particularism can lead to apathy towards world suffering until this suffering is realised. In order to explore the contradictions between these two concepts, Boltanski adopts the term politics of pity in order to pinpoint the modern consciousness in relation to suffering.

Politics of pity make a distinction between people that suffer and people that do not. A second distinction concerns what is seen and what is not, also referred to as the spectacle of suffering. The concept of spectacle is this regard does not centre any call to action, but is based on observation whereby the observer views the unlucky one without any direct contact or a shared suffering. The question whether the misery of the unlucky is justified, is never posed (the question of justification can be ascribed to the system of a politics of justice, which is based on action from above taken by rulers and is therefore the opposite of politics of pity). The development of a politics of pity relies on two sets of classes that are, ineffectively, equal to each other, expect for the factor of luck. These two classes must be at a distance so their actions are not to influence each other, whilst the fortunate must also be able to witness the misery of the unfortunate. It is important to note

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that the spectacle of misery does not always follow politics of pity. Namely, there is a possibility that the misery of the unfortunate generates no pity and is therefore simply whisked away. On the other hand, there is also a possibility that the more fortunate display a form of concern for the unfortunate which is unrelated to any form of politics. This point is made clear by Hannah Arendt, who addresses the examples of the Founding Father during the American Revolution and the Christian church before the 18th century as illustrations of a situation whereby people can live side by side without acknowledges the suffering of the other due to their respective conditions and the existence of a form of compassion able to manifest itself without being tied to a system of politics (Boltanski 3-6). By making this distinction, there is a definitive difference between the terms compassion and pity, although they are used subsequently in day-to-day conversation. To start, the act of compassion is mainly pointed towards individuals without the need for generalising their suffering onto a larger group of people. Face to face contact is a necessity for compassion, since the fortunate and the unfortunate have to present in the same space in order for compassion to be a viable emotion. Pity does not require this form of loquaciousness, since it can be expressed from far away. Compassion is a relativity mute form of expression; most of the expression related to compassion is non-talkative and is based on movements of the body and gestures. In other words, “compassion speaks only to the extent that it has to reply directly to the sheer expressionist sound and gestures through which suffering becomes audible and visible in the world (Arendt, On Revolution 86).” We can deduce from this statement that compassion is not talkative and has therefore has little to do with the two-sided exchange of emotion (7).

Even though both forms differ greatly from each other, the question regarding commitment towards the unfortunate is prevalent in both pity and compassion. A face-to-face situation as previously raised bridges the gap between knowledge and action, but does not necessarily help decide whether the fortunate should flee or help. In a communitarian structure, this decision would be mostly defined by the position that the fortunate and the unfortunate inhabit within the social structure itself. The conventions related to the structure limit the decisions one has to make regarding whether to help someone or not. The question of commitment only seems to be a problem for the perspective of a politics of pity due to the double requirement it has to meet. To feel pity, a person must be able to detach oneself from the individual and the locality of the suffering. A well-known technique to achieve this is to rely on the statistics-approach in order to dehumanize the suffering. This is not to say that pity relies upon a form of generalisation. Quite the contrary, situations leading to up pity do need a certain framing in relation to a

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specific case. For Kant, pity has always been a factor which lacks any form of proportion, seeing as we as humanity can mourn the loss of a child, fleeing from civil war and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, whilst we seem completely indifferent in engaging in military conflict in different parts of the world where lives are lost at a much faster rate (11-12).

A paradoxical problem that comes to the forefront when discussing the locality of a politics of pity, is the treatment of distance. A politics of pity wants to retain the qualities as presented to be in a physical encounter, but also has an inherent need for distance in order to be able to cope with the suffering of an assemblage of suffering across multiple regions and locations. Hannah Arendt goes even further by stating that when the unfortunate decide to inhabit the same space as the fortunate, they can no longer be seen as the unfortunate and a politics of pity breaks down. But even if the unfortunate is not physically present, the distant spectator still possesses a certain responsibility and moral obligation towards the unfortunate. In the situation of ordinary citizens who have adopted the role of the fortunate and the distant spectator, the subject of distance is only ever referenced to when the suffering of others is far away yet visible, but the spectator is not in a position to help the sufferers. So how are we to enhance to distant responsibility in a politics of pity? Seeing as distant spectators rarely respond to a cry for help for a multitude of reasons, one way of expanding the connection between the unfortunate and the fortunate is to reinforce the concept of omission. This means that we are all responsible for allowed events and tragedies to happen and linger, from the person most nearby the situation to the person furthest away from it. When averting his or her gaze, the distant sectors continue to do nothing about the suffering of the unfortunate, and is also partially responsible for the situation which he could have prevented (13-16). In this reasoning, Boltanksi finds the clear distinction between the world of representation and the world of action to be one of its most important components. Action leading upon suffering must be based on an accurate representation of the world. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, he is not too fond of the work of deconstructionist critics such as Jean Baudrillard, whom he actively mentions in his book as the primary example of a frame of mind that blurs the distinction between representation and action, making it seem nothing more than an illusion (154-158).

Boltanski argues that every group of unfortunates should get the same amount of media attention, but recognizing that there is not enough media space to show all the suffering that happens at the same time all over the world. He finds it unethical that the media often displays the suffering of others in a passive manner, but concurs that the

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display of passive suffering can lead to a form of action. In doing so, Boltanski might be his worst critic by showing both sides of his conceptual thinking. What Boltanski successfully does, is show us that we can become absorbed with our own pity when witnessing the suffering of others. In order to move away from the “perverse delight of spectacles of suffering”, society should move to a frame of mind focussed more on morality and commitment to the help of others, distant if not. Even though pity is not the most engaged manner of reacting to one’s suffering, it does leave open the chance for the sentiment to lead to compassion and possibly even social change. This is how the suffering of others can hopefully eventually be ended (Sawchuk 2002).

2.5 Roger Silverstone’s moral maximalism and proper distance

In relation to the morality associated with a politics of pity, theorists such as Chouliaraki and Roger Silverstone question whether a moral maximalism, in lines with the traditional sense of cosmopolitanism, can be translated into a form of uses and lead to a solid base for a deontology. Influenced by Boltanksi amongst others, Silverstone calls for media morality according to social scientist Daniel Dayan, whereby he makes the assumptions that some forms and subjects of journalism are, in fact, too significant to be left in the hands of journalists. In lines of the work of previously mentioned authors such as Arendt and Beck, Silverstone begins his moral investigation by coining the concept of the Mediapolis. This term refers to a “mediated public space where contemporary political life increasingly finds its place, both at national and global levels (Dayan 114).” A cosmopolitan character is at the heart of this concept, in that it revolves around a collection of individuals who inhabit the same space, but adhere to different religion, live in different cities etc. Even though there are clearly visible differences between the individuals, they do form a plurality in which everyone is included. Therefore, the Mediapolis is not necessarily a geographical entity that can be pointed out on a map, but a city-state formed by the organization between people themselves. This structure has certain Arendtian, namely that it functions in a reflective manner as we appear to others as others appear to us (114).

Silverstone focuses on the aspect of media performances, which invariably demand a moral dimension. He goes as far to state the moral state is the main responsibility of the media, because it supersedes all other ways of communication and connection with others. The media is, in this framework, the most constructive factor in our moral universe. This imposed importance upon the media should lead to regulation of the media, since the role they are to carry out is too vital to be left to corporations. This initial point of view could

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shock and to a degree frighten readers due to the dangers that come with regulating media, as this is a prevalent occurrence through world history leading to harrowing situations of limitation. According to Silvester, regulation of this kind can swing two ways; in a benevolent society it should increase the quality of the democratic process in the media, but endanger this process in a non-benevolent society. The emphasis of the desired regulation should be focussed more on the initial reasoning behind the regulation on a conceptual and intellectual level instead of referring to the actual measures taken. There are three themes that play an important role in Silverstone’s thinking: distance, responsibility and hospitality. These themes refer to the 1) ‘proper distance’ a person should adopt in relation to the other (which is no distance in the maximalist vision), 2) a ‘substantive responsibility’ that functions as a concept in which a person is responsible for himself and the condition of the other, and 3) a welcoming attitude towards all others in relation to you own space as drawn upon in Perpetual Peace by Kant and a willingness to let all parties be heard. In doing so, Silverstone adopts an extremely maximalist approach to these subjects. There’s no choice between immorality or morality in his vision, but only the moral stance and the even further moral stance towards suffering (115-121).

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3 Methodology and Corpus

The objects which shall be analysed in order to answer the research question, can be divided into four sections. From a theoretical point of view, I shall be discussing a number of authors connected to the subjects of grief, media bias, distant suffering and cosmopolitanism in relation to the case study of the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings. These authors chosen have sculpted the framework in the understanding of grief and suffering for decades, and are therefore a reliable basis for the analyses of the case study at hand. The analysis of the case study will be discussed in chapter five.

Firstly, this piece will examine a number of images in relation to the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings, as they have been published next to a number of articles on influential and major news websites. These include Western-based websites such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, The New York Times and The Atlantic, but also Non-Western and global based media such as Al-Jazeera, CNN and Reuters. This selection will give the analysis of the iconography a certain gravitas which is needed in order to answer the research question adequately. Furthermore, the decision to highlight a variety of national and international media is an intentional one, since it is important for the research question to clarify if there is a difference in the news coverage of these media outlets in the manner with which they frame their iconography to convey the suffering of others. For instance, the Al Jazeera news platform has its roots in the Arabic peninsula, which I felt would be a good counterweight for most of the other reports this piece will be utilising, which have a Western background. This variation is especially interesting in the light of the cosmopolitan perception of new media as a potential binding factor between communities of all sorts. In examining these various iconographies, I will primarily be referencing to the work of Butler and Chouliaraki, since their work is of a similar nature in the sense that they analyse iconography to see how a certain news event is situated by the media and perceived by the distant spectator.

Second, the piece will examine some videos and animations that were either created or recorded during and after the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings. By incorporating this into the case study, it will add another layer of depth to the analysis of the online media coverage of both events. The moving image has a way of conveying certain information and emotion in a manner that still imagery cannot. Furthermore, the factor of the quantity of “live coverage” during the Paris attacks plays a role in the decision to include video clips in the analysis, since this is one of the most clear divides between

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the ecstatic nature of the Paris attacks news coverage and the predominantly adventurous coverage of the Beirut bombings.

The third part of the iconography analysis will look at the medium of Google Images, a subpage of the well-known Google website, which is the most widely used search engine on the web. This medium was selected as an object of importance because it relates highly to the spectator’s view of a tragedy such as the Paris attacks and those in Beirut, seeing as this is the most likely place one would start searching for iconography in relation to the aforementioned tragedies. The first forty pictures in relation to the search queries ‘Paris attacks 2015’ and ‘Beirut bombings 2015’ will be analysed in the next chapter. This number will ensure that the most relevant photos on the web will be taken into account when evaluating the media coverage of both events as a whole, without delving too deep into the lower ranking images in the database of Google.

The last paragraph of the fifth chapter will research the linguistic differences in the headlines regarding the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings. Since performativity, which has “the reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains”, has its roots in linguistics and plays a crucial (and sometimes pivotal) role on the discourse of these types of tragedies, it is vitally important that the possible differences in tone of voice and information in the linguistics related to these events are also examined (Butler 1993, 2)

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4 Summary of the 2015 Paris attacks

On November 13th 2015, Paris was struck by a series of coordinated attacks that took place in the city centre of a capital and in one of its suburbs Saint-Denis. The attacks began at the Stade de France where the French and German national teams were in the middle of a friendly football match with more than 50.000 spectators in the stadium, which was also attended by French president Hollande and the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Three suicide bombers struck just outside of the stadium within a timeframe of 40 minutes. This was just the beginning of a harrowing night for the city of Paris: several minutes after the first detonation at the football stadium, various mass shootings were initiated on the streets of Paris as well as in restaurants and cafe’s. Most notably, terrorists took hold of the Bataclan theatre, opened fire on the crowd inside and held a large group of people hostage within the building. This lead to a conflict with police outside, after which the terrorists in the Bataclan theatre were either killed by police fire or took their own lives by shooting themselves or detonating explosives on their body.v

The number of casualties in the Paris attacks were as high as 130 with another 368 people being injured. The Islamic State eventually claimed the attacks through their networks, stating that they carried out the strike as a form of retaliation for the continuous efforts of the French governments in the airstrikes of IS-related targets in Iraq and Syria. France vowed to retaliate themselves and started their biggest airstrike to date up until that point just two days after the initial attacks of IS. The terrorists most likely chose the Bataclan theatre as one of their target because the location was previously owned by two Jewish men before selling the location in September 2015. The location had been threatened before due to its open political support for the state if Israel. Notable, the French government had been warned for a new attack by intelligence agencies from Turkey, Israel and Iraq. This information was not used to the fullest by the French authorities.vi

4.1 Summary of the 2015 Beirut bombings

On November 12th 2015, two suicide bombings blew themselves up in a crowded marketplace in the Bourj al-Barajneh neighborhood of Lebanon’s capital Beirut near the Mansour shopping centre, Panarea which is a well-known spot for the commercial side of the city. The attack was in the vicinity of a Palestinian refugees, also officials think that this fact was of no particular relevance to the terrorists. The explosives were detonated during

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one of the busiest parts of that evening, with large groups of people making their way through the narrow streets as most of the casualties were traveling back to their homes. The explosions led to the deaths of over 41 people and more than 180 were injured. The vii

neighborhood that was struck by the blasts, in considered to be a Hebollaz stronghold along with most of the southern part of Beirut. IS claimed responsibility in this case for the attacks, which lead most people to think this to be a form of retaliation for the involvement of Hezbollah within the Syrian civil war. The attack lead to a day of national morning on viii

November 13, officially initiated by the President and Prime Minister of Lebanon, Tammam Salam.

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5 Iconography in the online news coverage of the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings

In the first picture (see image 1) as published by the website Reuters , we see a type of ix

image that dominated several days of news coverage right after the Paris attacks took place. The picture shows the iconic Eiffel Tower in the centre of Paris, illuminated in the colours of the French flag. The angle of the camera is extremely low, enhancing the scale of the tower, making it seem ever taller than usual. The Latin phase ‘fluctuat new mergitur’ is visible in the middle of the tower, which translates into ‘tossed but not sunk’ and functions as one of the cities motto’s since at least 1358. Beside the clear resonance of the motto (Paris has taken quite the hit because of the attacks, but will invariably survive this horrific events as it did all others in her long history), the imagery of the tower in combination with the French flag carries out a message which is not hard to figure out. The Eiffel Tower, both as a symbol for the city of Paris and the French nation as a whole, is literally looked up to in this photo. France as a nation is defined as a strong structure which has stood the test of time and will always be triumphant in the face of adversity.

Image 1 - Picture: REUTERS / Jacky Naegelen

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Following the Paris attacks, numerous countries around the world adopted the colours of the French flag on their important landmarks. Notable examples here are the Opera House in Sydney, the World Trade Center in New York, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the Tower Bridge in London. From a x

cosmopolitan perspective, this is a clear indication of a sense of unity, with multiple countries adopting the symbol of one nation to show that they are committed to their suffering. This framing of suffering in a local, national and translational context show that the news coverage of the Paris attacks had such an impact on the Western population that there was a need for action from the spectators through a communitarian bond. In adopting the French flag as a symbol, Western countries invariably broke out of their own community and enlarged the range of engagement by showing a form of compassion. In our reflexive modernity, emotions and the identification of others walk a fine line with narcissistic intimacy and the communitarian reflex. In both scenarios, we are both prone to caring for others who are similar to us in all facets of life (Chouliaraki, Distant suffering in the media 14).

The mixture of cosmopolitanism and nationalism in the context of this picture is an interesting subject, because how do these national and transnational spaces precisely relate to each other? Globalisation is often seen as an added change that takes place outside of the concept of a nation, but in the view of cosmopolitanism, I feel that the initial concept of the nation in this context would be critically re-evaluated. The side by side existence of the national and transnational space are one of the difficulties we face in our reflexive modernity, whereby the simple distinction between places, events and people have shifted towards a logic based on complex ambiguity and reflexivity. When we think of the world becoming ever more cosmopolitan, we should also consider a new framing of sociology to fit new forms of communities instead of holding on to old conceptions of the nation-state. An important element in achieving a truly cosmopolitan society is to avoid utilizing the ideology of the nation-state as a focus point in our references, imagery and news coverage. This is because the concept of a nation assumes that humanity is by nature divided into a limited number of nations. This division, in turn, leads us to distinguish ourselves from others and is therefore less appropriate to play a solving and uniting role in the problems and challenges we face in our global climate (Beck 454-458).

Reuters also placed a photo slideshow of the Paris attacks aftermath on their website, which also give an extensive look into the iconography deemed expressive enough to convey not only the emotions involved with and stirred up by the attacks, but also which raw information is the right representation of the situation at the time. One of xi

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the most striking photos in the series depicts multiple women visibly grieving near one of the spots where the Paris attacks took place. This image is a clear example not only of a spectacle of suffering, but also a type of action since they are engaging in a type of display of commitment. Boltanski would characterize the expression in this image highly ‘authentic’ and define this as a good example of an enlarged sense of compassion in the news media coverage, since there’s an engagement with the suffering of others (Boltanksi 190).

Image 2 - Picture: REUTERS / Benoit Tessier

When researching the iconography in French national online media, the third image is somewhat related to the previous image, but has an added layer in combination with metaphorical language to the imagery. In this picture, placed on La Dépêche du Midi and originally taken by Agency France-Presse , we see a woman looking rather determined xii

into the distance, whilst people around here observe a minute of silence in front of the La Casa Rostra pizzeria. This site was one of the spots where the attackers opened fire and several victims died. The gathering was organized to pay tribute to all the victims of the attacks in Paris. The French flag fills a large part of the frame, again pointing towards the

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national spirit and the importance of France as the nation-state during the attacks in Paris. As has been seen in the picture of the Eiffel Tower, this image is also steeped in recursive representations. The woman in combination with the French draws to mind the reference to Marianne, a figure often displayed in several forms of French art such as literature, paintings and sculptures. She’s also the national symbol of the French republic and an allegory of liberty and a portrayal of the Roman god Libertas. Marianne can also be found on the French euro coins and is utilized as a state-symbol on most of the governmental documents.

Image 3 - Picture: AFP - Lionel Boneventure

But perhaps most importantly, she is the female embodiment of the Republic, which is a direct counterpart of not only the monarchy, but also any form of dictatorship or oppressive regimes. Immediately after the Paris attacks, the Islamic State claimed responsibility on November 14th 2015 through a stamens on a Telegram channel, calling the attacks “the first of the storm” and mocking France as a “capital of prostitution and obscenity.” In light xiii

of this, the image leaves a juxtaposing aftertaste to say the least. Even though the Islamic State might carry the name of an actual state, it does not possess any actual authority, sovereignty or legitimacy in the field of constitutional law. To me, the goal of this image is to try and counterpart the French values and ideology with the ideologies of their

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attackers. In doing so, this is bound to create a certain divisiveness not only amongst Frenchman and ISIS supporters, but also people from across the Middle-East who are in some way affected by the radical organization.

The community of ecstatic news may seem global in its scope in that it caters to a world-wide audience, but it also shows that the effectivity of these news pieces are only applicable to stories that have a relevance to the Western world. In the case of the Paris attacks, the ecstatic news that is the media coverage in the Western world mainly focuses on the European community and addresses the fears that an attack such as the one in Paris might be on the cards for other neighbouring countries and political allies. Consequently, the space where identification and action are formed within the news coverage is the exact same space where the spectator is left after watching the ecstatic news piece. Therefore, the spectator is stuck in a loop experiencing the same Western sentiment and focus time and time again, without the chance of witnessing the suffering of others where terror is possibly more prevalent (The Mediation of suffering, Chouliaraki 14-15). In my opinion, this scope of the iconography of the Paris tragedy is best described by the following image (see image 4). Hereby we look at the national team of France and England, all lined up on the lines of the mid-circle, coming together for a minute of silence to remember those who lost their lives during the attacks.

Image 4 - Picture: The FA / Stephen Pond

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The game between England and France taking place right after the attacks is, in my opinion, a random occurrence but the picture does cause one to think about the different spheres within which a news piece can roam. In regard to the Paris attacks, we can see that this story plays out on a national level, a European level, a Western level and, arguably, a global level. But how does the media coverage regarding the Beirut attacks fare in relation to the Paris attacks? In the next section, we will be looking at a handful of images and headlines in order to see how the situation and the possible grief are represented through the lens of the Western media.

A striking thing concerning the photo slide show as presented on the website of The Telegraph, is that the spectator sees almost exclusively complete destruction and annihilation in the images. These vary from burning cars alongside a fire-fighter trying to xiv

extinguish the flames with a fire hose, to the rumble in the street caused by the explosion and complete building wiped away by the blast. Most of the pictures are taken from afar or from an elevated level. This causes the spectator to not be able to clearly identify the suffering of individuals. Also, the elevated level of the photographers may be due to the fact that there was no other space for the photographer to get a clear view of the situation at hand, even though films theorists amongst us clearly recognize this “technique”, which is often used to “swallow up” the point of focus and make the subject of the image seem vulnerable, weak, frightened or submissive. The prevalence of wreckage and debris being the centre of almost every image seems to correlate with the perspective that a percentage of Westerners still visualize Beirut and Lebanon as an area of conflict. It is surprising to say the least that there are no pictures of grieving people located in the rest of city. The images related to the Paris attacks are flooded with important landmarks in the city itself, and a majority of the pictures have been taken in the vicinity of the attacks, but not at the direct spots. The Telegraph photo section clearly lacks any recognizable imagery for people to utilize in order to be able to apprehend the suffering of the Beirut civilians. Only the first picture falls in this category, whereby a man carries away a women who was near the explosion when it happened. Another technique used in these images, are shots from afar. There are definitely people in the images, but the photos do not revolve around a single individual or a group of people. Hence, nobody acknowledges the medium as such, which could have been done with a look or a gaze to convey emotion or reactions. Shots like these present few points of recognition or distinctive factors to direct the spectator into a certain direction. What these images convey is a type of universalism in this particular scene of suffering. When looking at these pictures without any form of

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context, it would be hard for a neutral and average-informed spectator to figure out where this attack took place, let alone what exactly happened during the calamity.

Image 5 and 6 - Picture: Agence France Presse / Anwar Amro and European Pressphoto Agency / Wael Hamzeh

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Image 7 and 8 - Picture: Reuters - Hasan Shaaban

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5.1 Videos and footage in the online news coverage of the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings

One of the big differences in the news coverage between the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings, was the continuous updates by news media in their online facility. The mixture of images, videos and soundbites offered the spectator a hectic range of impressions of the goings-on in Paris, ironically, much like the situation in real-life would have felt like. This variation of impressions enables us to engage with the sufferers in a multitude of ways, namely “to empathize, to denounce and to reflect on it as a human tragedy and as a political reality (Chouliaraki 2008, 9).” In these images, the sufferers of the Paris attacks are very much humanized, and therefore we are able to feel their pain and transcend the phase recognition into an apprehension of their grief.Undoubtedly of the most shared video’s of the Paris attacks by the online news media, was the video recording of a CCTV camera in the café Cosa Rostra, which was attacks by gunman during the Paris attacks. Reportedly, the British newspaper The Daily Mail bought the video for €50.000, after which they destroyed the original to prevent other media organizations to obtain it. The video was published online on November 18th and can now be viewed under the search query ‘Terrifying ISIS Paris attack CCTV’ on YouTube.xv

In the beginning of the CCTV footage, the café and its guests seem to be having a normal night, no distressed behaviour whatsoever. Almost immediately, bullets are being fired in the direction of the café and the windows are shattering, whilst people are trying to figure out precisely what is happening. Two people flee inside the café in order to get away from the shooter and also fall to the floor for cover. The shooter walks over to the door of the cafe and seemingly spares the lives of two women laying on the ground in front of the café (this is actually because the gun of the assailant jammed, leading to a chance for her to run away). The video thereafter shows the same moment but from the viewpoint of the bar, where we can see the staff ducking for cover and people making their way up the stairs to the second level and down the stairs to the basement in order to flee for safety. Afterwards, it became clear that everyone in this café had survived the attacks, some with minor bullet wounds. Others in the vicinity were not so lucky, as five people perished in a likewise attack nearby the café. The attacker fired at least 30 bullets at the café.

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Image 9 - Still from CCTV footage of gunman aiming at woman. Placed by The Guardianxvi

The video can be characterized as particularly chilling in nature and grainy in regards to the visual aspect. The rough quality of the footage normally reminds us of robbery footage, thus it is an alienating sensation to see CCTV footage of this sort in combination with a terrorist attack. Even though the images are grainy and at times too fuzzy discern in an instant what exactly is going on, the content is definitely harrowing and displays the fear and shock the people of that café must have felt on the moment itself. The Paris attacks were heavily reported on, with the massacre in the concert hall La Bataclan at the forefront. Reading about the horrors is one thing, but actually having a visualization of the moment where ordinary people have and may have lost their lives, these accounts are an extremely immersive form of engagement with those events. Here we can see a clear politics of pity, whereby the observer and the sufferer are physically distant from each other, even though the media attempts to bring the news as direct and close-up as possible. With all the terrible things happening in the world, people are increasingly avoiding the suffering of others, especially when they have the feeling that there is nothing concrete they can do to help the situation. So when society is overexposed to the news coverage of the media as much as it is today, observers view the problems of others from a distance, assuming that these struggles will not go away any time soon. This leads to a

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downward spiral in regard to the suffering of others, whereby the audience seems to get desensitized after so many news items with seemingly the same events.

In examining actual footage of the Beirut attacks, real footage taken during the attacks is very scarce. One most widely publicized footage of the bombings was done by RT (previously known as Russia Today), which is an international multi-lingual news network based in Russia. They published a video entitled “Twin suicide bombings rock Beirut; 43 killed, over 200 wounded” on Youtube on November 12 , with other networks xvii

such as The Independent sharing the video on their channels.xviii

The 30-second video can be divided into two sections. In the first thirteen seconds, the spectator is presented with the grainy footage filmed by a by-stander, most likely someone with a camera phone. The image starts with the view on a Beirut street, after which a blast goes off. The crowd gathered in the street decide to run and so does the cameraman, since the camera is pointed on the floor the seconds after the blast. The camera turns around and films a quick snapshot of the people behind him, some running away and some standing still to try and see what exactly has happened. The last 17 seconds of the video are set in what is mostly likely the front-end of a Beirut hospital. Several people are rushed on hospital beds and pulled into the building for treatment. Another injured person is driven in on a scooter, to also be treated for a wound to the head.

Image 10 - Still from Al-Jazeera’s online piece “Deadly suicide attack rocks southern Beirut”

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In relation to the Beirut bombings, it is essential that this piece included the video footage collected and shared in the articles of Al-Jazeera related to the Beirut bombings. This is because Al-Jazeera is an Arabian news network and predominantly utilizes the medium of video in order to explain to its readers the situation at hand, rather than using images. The first article Al-Jazeera presented, was on November 13th 2015 and entitled “Deadly suicide attack rocks southern Beirut”. Their video coverage embedded in the piece is a xix

two-minute video showing the distant spectator the damage that the bombings have caused. Whilst the commentator talks about the casualties of the attacks, the imagery almost exclusively displays the damage done to the buildings or other objects such as cars and scooters. There is no real visible suffering in the frame, of either victims or family of victims. Perhaps this is all left out for a reason. Some might say that this is to avoid frightening the viewers and sensitize them, whilst some are confident that this is because there is no real call of empathy in relation to the bombings. One thing is sure: whatever the motivation was to leave out the real suffering of the people of the ground, the inclusion of this suffering in the online media coverage is detrimental for the distant spectator to feel engaged and feel a form of pity or grief. In this sense, the online video coverage of the disaster is not helping in shaping a cosmopolitan solidarity or community in which all suffering is valued the same.

5.2 Iconography of the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings on Google Images

In order to gain a clearer picture of the differences in suffering in online spheres, it is important to research the images as represented by Google’s Images function. In this comparison, I have input the search terms Paris attacks 2015 and Beirut bombings 2015 and looked at the first forty hits. What we see within these searches, is that most of the returned images convey a stark identity of the city of Paris and the emotion of personal suffering and compassion. Most of the pictures depict a congregation of people nearby one of the several spots where the Paris attacks took place. The spots are completely filled with flowers and candles to commemorate those that have died. Other pictures show some form of text or reference to the city of Paris in the form of candles, signs depicting the Je Suis Paris slogan or the variation the peace symbol with the outlines of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the circle. Other signs say “not afraid” or “Islam is not terrorism” or “not in our name”.

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Image 10 and 11 - First forty results of search query Paris bombings 2015 on Google

The Je Suis Charlie slogan is a particularly interesting one, seeing as this slogan is derived from the slogan Je Suis Charlie, coined by French art director Joachim Roncin after the attacks at the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris earlier that year. Within two days of the attack in January, the slogan became one of the most used hash-tags in the entire history of Twitter. The aforementioned Eiffel Tower peace sign was designed by French illustrator Jean Jullien a couple of hours after the attacks in November 2015. The symbol was used frequently on social media and news outlets, often accompanied by the hashtags #PrayersforParis and #PeaceforParis. When we look at the

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nature of these pictures and the thought behind the illustrations and images, we can see a clear pattern of remembrance and identification with the Parisians and the French population. The level of compassion is high in these images and there even is a certain type of action visible in the pictures. Various images display French soldiers on locations throughout the city of Paris, trying to secure locations, help people afflicted by the attacks and possibly look out for any new attacks and initial perpetrators of the first attacks. Even though this type of actions is not derived from the distant spectator, it is something which has a relevance in relation to the imagery of the event.

The forty-first images on Google with the search query Beirut bombings 2015 showcase a completely different collage. There are much less images of remembrances and almost no reference to any communitarian sentiment such as iconography related to Beirut or Lebanon in any way. Most of images display debris and a situations which can not be assigned to a specific situation or location on its own merit. The only picture that stands out on a personal level and shows individual suffering, is the image of the woman in a crowd holding up a picture of a man, quite possibly her son and another relation. Some images show large crowds of people, seemingly with a much more anger-based sentiment as they mourn the lives of the people that were killed by the blast. In other words, the Beirut bombings iconography is not focussed on making the distant spectator emphasize with the sufferers there, as is clearly the case with the iconography of the Paris attacks.

Perhaps most notably about the Beirut bombings query, is that one picture in the first forty hits that references to the Paris attacks with the text ‘Solidaire avec Paris’, which translates into ‘Solidarity with Paris’ (see image 12). The picture shows a Parisian remembrance on the left side and the rubble and chaos of the Beirut bombings on the right. This picture was published on many Western sites such as the opinion piece “Does Paris Matter More Than Beirut”, published on November 16 on Slate. The main problem xx

with this picture, I find, is the state in which both areas of the events are represented in the stationary nature of the image. With the fact that the Beirut events took place a day earlier than the Paris attacks, it is a curious decision to have displayed the goings-on in Paris with a remembrance image, but displayed in scenes in Beirut with a point of view from the epicentre of the disaster. The creator of the image could have also chosen to show the shot-up Cosa Rostra café or the ravage in the Bataclan theatre, but clearly decided to represent another sentiment. The representation of the situation of Beirut in pictures contributes to the view of Beirut as a city in turmoil, as if to stay that there was no other image to be found to adequately describe the situation at hand, not only in the area of the

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blast but the entire city of Beirut. This leaves one with an ironic taste in the mouth; questioning why Paris seemingly matters more than Beirut to Western and international media, whilst simultaneously perpetuating this by choosing to represent the suffering of others and the situation at hand in completely different manners.

Image 12 and 13 - First forty results of search query Paris bombings 2015 on Google

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When looking at the image without any links or textual context, one may also perceive this picture as a show of support from the Beirut/Lebanese community towards the people of Paris, showing towards them a form of pity by recognizing the suffering that the people of Paris had to endure due to the attacks. This could imply a certain elevated level of importance in relation to the Paris attack, a hierarchy if you will, whereby the suffering of the Paris attacks is valued more of a priority and concern, since they are seemingly actively mourned, whilst the Beirut bombings does not receive such a sentiment within the image.

5.3 The linguistic differences in the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings headlines

According to Nadine Ajaka’s article on The Atlantic, there was a definitive difference between the language used to describe the events and the emphasis on which information was used and left out, or as Judith Butler would put it, “how the news was framed”. For instance, English-language press often referred to the set of the Beirut attack as an “Hezbollah stronghold”. NPR covered the event by naming their article “Suicide Bombing Kills At Least 37 In Hezbollah Stronghold Of Southern Beirut”, whilst Slate referred to this with “Dozens Killed in Bombing Targeting Hezbollah Stronghold in Lebanon”. We can xxi

see a clear example here of the framing of war, whereby the victims of the attack are framed as casualties of war, another episode in the saga of Middle-Eastern unrest, since Hezbollah has been fighting for Assad in Syria, who in turn opposes ISIS who claimed responsibility for the twin bombing in Beirut. In contrast, the online article titles regarding the Paris attacks never contained any rhetoric of war, but instead reflected disbelief and grief. Reuters wrote that “Disbelief, panic as militants cause carnage in Paris a second time,” whilst The New Yorker wrote “Terror Strikes in Paris”. This can be seen as xxii

somewhat hypocritical, since France had begun airstrikes into Syrian territory against ISIS since September 2015. The Guardian followed up the Beirut bombings a couple of days after with an article containing the headline “Beirut bombings: what is the mood in Lebanon?” and the subject asking the reader “what the mood is where you are”. After a double suicide bombing with at least 43 dead, simply asking this question seems to point to a grave disconnect in regard to the feelings and emotions of the sufferings in Beirut. This also suggests that the sentiment amongst the people of Beirut is a different one from, for instance, the people in Paris. Because if not, why is The Guardian not asking to question how Parisians feel after the attacks. The piece ends by asking:

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“We’d like to know what the reaction is in the areas following the bombings. Do you feel safe where you live? How do you feel about the events? How do you think the country should move forward following the attacks? You can share your reaction by clicking the blue button on this page.”xxiii

So, in reality, it seems not all life possesses the same amount of grievability as philosophies such as cosmopolitanism would have one think. We can state that there are certain limits which play a role in the degree of grievability. The further away a lost human life is located, the lower the level of empathy with that death due to the particularly limited frame of reference. In fact, not only are news coverage and people themselves biased, but the media and information technologies are not neutral either. As Christine Nystrom, a long-time colleague of Neil Postman, summarizes: “Because of their differences in physical and symbolic form, and the resulting differences in their intellectual, emotional, temporal, spatial, political, social, metaphysical, and content biases, different media have different epistemological biases (Zimmer 6).” Theorist Michael Zimmer states that the fundamental goal for media ecology is to make clear how biases in media technologies impact our everyday lives. Through a media ecological lens, it is possible to study the link between the technology we utilize and the forms of social structure we create throughout time. The consequences created by various forms of technology can stem from a political, social, or cultural root (7). Means of communication facilitate the way we understand human emotion and perception and how we interact with each other (Postman 1970, 161).

In the case of the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings, Zimmer’s exogenous and interactional theories feel more applicable. The former states that bias is not embedded into a certain technology from the creator’s aspect, but rather looks more at the social construction of that technology; the ways in which different social groups construct their own shaping of the medium and pursue their own interest alongside the biases that come with it, eventually ending in stabilization (Zimmer 3). The latter is a slight variation of the exogenous theory, by stating that technology keeps changing over time because of human interaction. In this scenario, the technology is continuously redesigned due to our changing interactions with the medium (Zimmer 4). In particular, the exogenous theory seems to fall in line with the aforementioned theories of Butler and Asad on grief. How we feel about others, is in part conditioned by the way we interpret everything that happens around us; social and political forces play an important role in such processes due to the fact that they forge multiple constructions by which we can apprehend and recognize life in order to be grievable.

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6 Selective outrage or empathy gap?

The concept of selective outrage has been referred previously to the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings, but this short span of time is a perfect recent example of how comparative tragedies are covered in completely different ways by national and international media outlets. The Atlantic goes as far to say that there exists an inherent problem with news coverage by which they have named the ‘empathy gap’. David A. xxiv

Graham wrote his piece in order to examine why the media and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are full of articles about the Paris attacks, but lack any real information or involvement regarding the Beirut bombings. Also, the clear division between the creation of the application of the Safe Check-in as creating by Facebook in the specific case of the Paris attacks suggests that there is either definitely a difference in how we approach the suffering of others, whether this has to do with distance, selective grief or media bias (this is, of course, up for debate). In his article, he outlined a couple of arguments why the Western world reacted so vehemently to the Paris attacks. The first one is that there were approximately triple the number of deaths in Paris than in Beirut. In my opinion, this argument is completely invalid when compared with other events in recent history. For instance, when following this range of logic, the Western address a tragedy or event more when there are more casualties involved. This is clearly not the case; since there have been a string of events in countries like Nigeria and Kenya where many more people died as a consequence of terrorist attacks. Two examples that come to mind, are the various terrorist attacks of Boko Haram last year in the form of opening fire in mosques and executing suicide bombings and the Garissa University College attacks in Nairobi, which only garnered a headline in most Western papers and media outlets.

Another reason posed is the factor of familiarity. The chances of inhabitants of the Western world having travelled to Paris in their lifetime is most likely higher than having travelled to Beirut and other distant places, where attacks have occurred such as the tragedies in Garissa and throughout Nigeria. The argument is extended towards the representation of Paris in forms of media, stating that Paris as a city is a symbol for high culture and referenced to in countless movies, books and online content. A troubling tribal, or racial statement could also fit into this theory of familiarity, as people tend to care more for people they can see themselves in. In regard to this argument, the concept of recognition springs to mind immediately.

Closely related to the previous is divergence in expectations. The argument can be made that an attack in a country which is relatively stable and is not in a conflict with either

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its own citizens or other states, leads to more upset than we witness in a similar occurrence taking place in a country ravaged by chronic conflict. Even though the perception of certain individuals might be in line with this frame of mind, it could not be further from a perception based on reality and facts. Lebanon faced a brutal civil war from 1975 up until 1990, after which the situation has been relatively peaceful, with the bombings in 2015 being the deadliest bombing to have struck the city of Beirut in more than 25 years. In opposite views, Paris is not unfamiliar to uprisings itself. Riots and violence in the street in the year 2005 spring to mind, which can be seen as a culmination of a deeper problem within Parisian and French society, namely the division between race, religion and class within their communities. In fact, despite being relatively unknown, Beirut was once called the Paris of the Middle East. There are many comparisons which can be made between the two cities that might startle those not knowing much about the Lebanese capital. For instance, the centres of the city are very extravagant with plenty of shopping possibilities and tourist attractions. Meanwhile, both cities also have a large conglomeration of suburbs attached to them, inhabited mostly by the less-wealthy with a large contingency of immigrants and children of immigrants. In Paris, the neighbourhoods are often mentioned as the banlieue.

When examining the iconography of the pictures related to the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings a clear distinction can be made; namely that the national aspect seems not to be present in the images of the Beirut bombings. There are no recognizable figures of the state of Lebanon, no flags referring the nation-state, actually almost no reference to the location of the bombings at all. It might seem odd (and to some, maybe deliberate), but there is an explanation for this that could present us with satisfying clarification on the matter. One reason, as written by Lebanese analyst Emile Hokayem, is that, despite the country having a long peaceful spell after the civil war, the divisions in Lebanon still run very deep into the different communities of the city. This, according to Hoyakem, might be the most prevalent theory on why national tragedies such as the bombings fail to bring its citizens together and solidify a sense of unity on a national level, but also being able to send out this message to the rest of the world, as is clearly visible in the media coverage of the Paris attacks. Hokayem, also an affiliate of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told The Daily News the following:

“Fundamentally, the Lebanese are deeply divided along political and sectarian lines. This is reflected in their confused reactions to bombings in their own country: Almost everyone condemns them, but sympathy and compassion are hard to come

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by. There is no national solidarity that results from tragedies, so there is little to capture people’s attention abroad. The more horrifying part of the reaction to the Paris terrorist attacks, however, is that some Arabs and Lebanese were more saddened by what was taking place there than what took place yesterday or the day before in their own backyards. Even among my people, there is a sense that we are not as important, that our lives are not as worthy and that, even as little as it may be, we do not deserve to have our dead collectively mourned and prayed for.”xxv

The divides within Lebanon society stems from 15 years of civil war, which caused neighbourhoods in the capital to be separated on the basis of religions. Especially the divide between Sunni and Shia is a hot topic, not only in Lebanese civilization but also in a multitude of primarily Muslim countries. This is illuminated by the fact that the casualties of the bombings are almost exclusively Shia due the religious nature of the neighbourhood itself. In the years before the bombings, Hezbollah strongholds are claimed to be amongst the targets of Sunni militants, referring again to the volatile situation in regard to religion in Beirut. When regarding these claims to be an accurate representation of the situation among civilians in Beirut, the question arises as to how the rest of the world is supposed to deal with the grief, suffering and situation at hand while there are multiple sources claiming that there is no real recognition, apprehension, politics of pity or feeling of responsibility from the people within minute distance of the sufferers. Is the recognition of suffering on a local and national level a prerequisite for the acknowledgement of suffering on a global scale?

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7 Slavoj Žižek’s social critique after the Paris attacks and Beirut bombings

Right after the Paris attacks, French politics ventured even more to the right with the Front National laying in hard towards president Hollande and FN leader Marine Le Pen called for France to rearm, take back control of its border and destroy radical Islam. The xxvi

predominant imagery of France as the nation-state and the rise of radical extreme-right thinking are two factors which seem to have some form of correlation with each other, as it is a recurrent theme throughout the history of several European countries and also outside the continent. From these occurrences, we can deduce that there are radical sentiments on both sides of the isle. Someone who is never to shy to venture into a discussion regarding the topics discussed is Slavoj Žižek.

Through his particularly eccentric writing, the Slovenian philosopher shone his light on the matter directly after the Paris attacks and investigated how the West should respond to the threat of radical Islam, also in conjuncture with the stream of refugees and immigrants leaving Syria and passing through Turkey with the hope of finding a better life in Europe. According to Žižek, the West should be taking control of the situation by breaking some leftist taboos such as limiting the right to free movement (with the argument that this right is already absent with refugees because this also heavily depends on the situation in the class hierarchy), but also accept that the culture most refugees have grown up with (in my perception an roundabout way of simply referring to Middle-Eastern culture in general) are not compatible with Western culture and its values. Tolerance as a means of coming together does not work in the eyes of Žižek, since there are too many differences between the groups that cannot be overcome. For instance, Žižek refers to the fact that fundamentalist Muslims cannot seem to align with the fact that the Western world revels in blasphemous rhetoric, language and images whilst Western liberals cannot align the many of the customs and behaviour present in Muslim culture. In order to curb these contradictions in culture from spatting out into, for instance, violence, Žižek proposes that we should formulate a set of norms which are to be seen as obligatory for everyone and should encapsulate tolerance towards all different ways of life. He also raises the concept of Islamophobia, stating that we should be able to critique Islam and not pursue our liberal Western ways by simply not addressing real issues because it makes us feel guilty. This hypocrisy will only lead to more accusations from Muslim fundamentalisms, saying that we covering up our distaste for Islam by not being frank about our position.xxvii

For the solution to the problems of the refugees and the attacks of ISIS, Žižek proposes that we invent new forms of collective action. Notably, he explicitly denounces

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any governmental or state-run intervention whilst also turning down the local form of help and organization (he is not very specific on which methods to utilize, if not these ones). If these approaches are not able to handle the situation and deal with them appropriately, we might be forced into a system reminiscent of the era of apartheid in South Africa, whereby conflicting areas ridden of famine and war are closed off from the rest of the world. This is, of course, a rather grim image Žižek is painting in order to get his message of incompatibility and unease across to his reader, but the sentiment is a very real one at that. He does, however, acknowledge that we are all in some way to blame for the problems in the world. The stance of ordinary people is that these outside forces are threatening our way of life but foreigners are not the right starting point. We should be teaching everyone that we are all responsible for our own fate.

Even though Žižek does not implicitly mention the concept of cosmopolitanism in his Paris article, it is fair to assume that he is a critic and sceptic regarding the subject and therefore a contrary figure to the likes of Beck and Cheah, judging on other work he has written over the past decades. Žižek’s undertone is usually a cynical one and the incorporation of differences in a cosmopolitan setting seem as a challenging factor to Žižek. He adheres to an ‘incorporation strand’ of cosmopolitanism, which looks at the participation in the global capitalist economy as a type of movement which is solely based on one’s ability and resources. One inevitably has to come to terms with the fact that one has to move within the global formations of capital, even though this formation is exactly the driving behind the exploitation of difference amongst man, after which it gets rebranded into terms such as multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism (Skeggs 157-158).

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8 A deconstructivist critique of news coverage of terrorist attacks

In the year 1991, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote three essays about the Gulf War, which were later bundled up into his famed piece The Gulf War did not take Place in 1995. The book revolved around the concept of the hyperreality, which refers to an event that is extremely highly covered by the media and saturated with images and videos. Due to this over-saturation, the reality of the situation is put on the back-burner. Instead, a virtual reality is created whereby the reactions of media and individuals alike are “simulated”, as they hold no direct connection to the actual experience of war. By defining the news coverage and iconography of the Gulf War as a hyperreality full of simulacra (false copies of the reality), it lead Baudrillard to fear that the distant spectators of an event such as the Gulf War are therefore slowly losing the idea of real despair and agony for themselves and for others, since the suffering is no longer actually experienced.

The interesting hypothetical in relation to Baudrillard and his aforementioned work, is he, were he still alive, would have also written about the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings in the same manner as he did about the Gulf War back in 1991. The example of the Paris attacks stands out specifically in this regard, since the attacks would have happened in the vicinity of the French philosopher. Baudrillard lived in Paris for most of his life, therefore he would have most likely been affected by the attacks in some way or another. My guess is that Baudrillard would not have dared to pen down such a question posed whether the Paris attacks had actually happened, in major part due to the enormous backlash such a theoretical and conceptual assumption would have caused in the French media. When examining the pure theoretic of his concept, one can only conclude that the insights of Baudrillard during the Gulf War in regard to hyperreality and simulacrum were as much present in the representation and iconography of Paris attacks as they were 25 years ago. On the global media networks such as Reuters and CNN, the world seemed to revolve solely around Paris on the day of the attacks and the days to come. In doing so, the horrors in Paris and the narrative attached to it were, in effect, sealed off from the rest of the world. Because there was basically no other news coverage related to other events in the world, it was increasingly difficult for the rest of the world, especially in the non-Western communities, to understand and come to term with the news from Paris and analyze the situation accordingly. The focus on Paris was so dense that the entire reality of Paris as a city imploded and was lost in the realm of the hyperreality, descending even more due to the endless barrage of representations, turning it into one big simulacrum.

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Image 11 - Still from Paris attacks 3D animation made and published by News Directxxviii

The news coverage of the Paris attacks should have focussed on placing the events in a global perspective and should have taken the time to present suffering in a meaningful way, but instead fuelled the fire of the already existing notion of the Eurocentric preference of the Western media by showing us mostly extreme close-ups of either citizens or details of the scenes where the attacks took place. Ironically, these extreme close-ups of the situations at hand fail to show us the bigger picture, and therefore closed off the string of events for a major chunk of the world population. Multiple news outlets even made animation renditions of how the situations in the city played out, and hereby making the attacks and the city of Paris itself a digitalized rendition of reality.

But, we must realize that the Paris attacks in no way can be seen as the starting point for this trend in Western media. The fixations on European and Western disasters will continue to prevail if there is no change to the approach concerning the suffering of all in the global setting. The theories about hyperreality and related concepts have, up until recently, mostly referred to situation outside of the peripheral physical scope of theorists. It’s an particularly bad time for this aggressive transmutation of reality to have become ingrained in the news coverage of Western media, since not only are events such as terrorist attacks and other disasters seemingly happening at an alarmingly frequent rate, but the concepts of hyperreality and simulacra have started to hit home for most of the theorists that have written about this extensively. In that sense, there is no more clear divide between the landscapes and divisions that were purveyed in the news sphere until recently. Civilizations used to be divided according to a merit of factions, but current

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situations have shown that these have become obsolete. The most evident reference to this collapse of divisions between concepts such as “the East” and “the West” are marked by the Syrian refugee crisis. People are fleeing from their home country either by foot or in boats, trying to make it to Turkey or Greece in order to make their way to the safety they perceive the European continent to possess. Meanwhile, military forces from the European continent fly over the civil war ridden areas in order to try and defeat the Islamic State from the sky by bombing their strongholds and cut them off from important monetary sources. These interactions, for lack of a better word, show that the relations between countries, continents and other geographical entities are not as clear-cut as they seem to be and can lead to a false sense of division in regard to civilization as a whole.

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9 Conclusion

While the dissemination of news has continuously played an important role in the diffusion of media, this paper has shown that differences in levels of selective grief and distant suffering are very prevalent within today’s society and the new media outlets we utilize on a daily basis. The work of Judith Butler functions as a psychological explanation to why we invariable seem to make an (un)conscious decision to grieve the life of one person, but to forfeit that of another. We need to be able to recognize and apprehend a life before we can mourn it. In order to recognize a life, the framing of news and the media bias plays an essential role in the way we perceive the lives of others and in some sense their basic existence. Global events are often integrated into local discourses due to associative framing (Volkmer 239; Ruigrok and van Attenveldt 68). The Internet clearly has an impact on the psychology of the self, which is not only leading to narcissism, but also to independent and interdependent, collectivist and individualist aspects in Internet culture due to the variations of cultures which are being represented on the web (Biggs 32). Does the Internet bring us closer together in a cosmopolitan manner or will it invariably lead to an urban jungle with little regard for others? The case study in this paper comparing the iconography and textuality used to describe and display the Paris attacks and the Beirut bombings to the distant spectator, suggest that we still have a long way to go before we can move towards a media sphere with less bias and more egalitarian and cosmopolitan sentiment towards all lives lost, wherever in the world they may be located.

So how does humanity itself and media landscape move forward in this regard? In one of his last ever published lectures, Neil Postman talks about a humanistic view in order to consider trying to understand media and the way it shapes human concepts. Postman concludes by saying that as he understood it, “the whole point of media ecology, it exists to further our insights into how we stand as human beings, how we are doing morally in the journey we are taking (Postman 2000, 16).” Even though some of the thinking in the media ecology sphere seems quite contradictory to the way in which we grieve other lives and frame certain media events, it can also prove a valuable tool in exploring these variations of bias in the cultural and technological sphere. Arguably one of the most useful ways of utilizing the frame of media ecology is to look at cultures within a medium from Neil Postman’s perspective of moral growth (Postman 10). It is quite possible that this style of thinking can lead to a renewed progress on the general subject of media and humanistic advance.

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From a social point of view, solidarity in morality seems to be the common thread in trying to move towards a truly cosmopolitan media landscape and spectatorship. The power of the media includes the possibility to assemble the frame through which spectators see the world beyond their local perspective, next to the possibility to broaden the horizon of the public to recognize and apprehend people outside of their own sphere. This is why online news media plays such as a pivotal role in the shaping of public perception and should be more involved in turning the cosmopolitan imagination into the cosmopolitan reality.

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