{"id":15446,"date":"2013-04-24T11:43:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T15:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=15446"},"modified":"2013-04-24T19:06:43","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T23:06:43","slug":"hashtag-sympathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/04\/24\/hashtag-sympathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Hashtag Sympathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sadjifinal\"<\/a>Facebook and Twitter, like any other form of communication, can be used to forge solidarity. As philosopher Richard Rorty reminds us in Method, Social Science, and Social Hope<\/i>, one of the boundless powers of the humanities and of storytelling\u2014novels, journalism, ethnographies, photography, documentaries\u2014is to grow our imaginations so that the norms which would exclude foreigners, or the poor, or minorities, are replaced with a solidarity against suffering. In stories like Native Son<\/i>, The Diary of Anne Frank <\/i>and Brokeback Mountain<\/i>, <\/i>the cruelties of those who are not familiar to us are described in astonishing, bright detail. The humans who populate Dirty Pretty Things, Sin Nombre <\/i>and How to Survive A Plague <\/i>become less distant, more familiar. Through imagination, their suffering becomes ours. In many instances, networked media facilitate this kind of sensitivity building, this form of democratic attunement. But under the ceaseless pressure of shareability and virality, tragedy on social media often resembles disaster porn: a ghastly vine<\/a>, a sappy post, attention seeking hashtags, confusing the spread of symbolic images for enduring political achievement.<\/p>\n

That grief is best endured in groups was not lost on those involved in the Boston Marathon or to those who experienced it through networked media. As platforms for articulating emotion, the streams of Twitter and Facebook have been inflected with profound sympathy, unabashed condolence, and a peculiar kind of catastrophe catharsis. Blood drenched pavement has a way of putting petty difference in its place. Tragedy breeds camaraderie.<\/p>\n

Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Law\u2014that each year we will share more of our life-moments on social networks\u2014and Facebook\u2019s axiom, that everything is better when shared with friends, fits nicely into this paradigm. The \u201cMy heart goes out to the victims in Boston\u201d<\/i>\u00a0and \u201cPrayers to law enforcement<\/i>\u201d posts can be seen as healthy extensions of sympathy. The hallmarks of Facebook\u2019s logic\u2014extraversion and sharing\u2014seem acutely appropriate for coping with the psychic trauma of disaster.<\/p>\n

But even the most gentle heart sees something amiss.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d my kindhearted post where I word-vomit my benevolence onto a trending news story. Render unto me retweets for this unselfish link of teary,\u00a0bleeding\u00a0New England faces. Comment on my compassion even as I contort my very remote connection to Boston\u2019s victims into a post that\u2019s really about me. <\/i><\/p>\n

In this cynical interpretation,\u00a0documented sharing incentivizes Facebook and Twitter users to traffic in disaster\u00a0porn. This is the depiction of destruction or tragedy in ways that do not enlighten, but merely sensationalize, pervert, exploit. The ego-stroking affirmations of social networks\u2014the likes and RTs\u2014the ones that push us to share new music and comment on engagement photos, seem perverse when dealing with gory misfortune. From this unsavory perspective, many of the declarations whizzing around Boston look like sympathy but smell like attention-seeking.<\/p>\n

On television, disaster porn is more familiar to us. We\u2019re used to the urge to aggrandize coverage of disastrous events. Attempts to place the episode in historical context or to remain attentive to the victims and their stories are merely secondary to the pornographic pursuit of the prurient. Give us the wrecked storefronts, the shattered car windows. Show us the mangled limbs, the protruding bones. Screaming, twisted faces? all the better! <\/i>Viral shares are the old pageviews are the old ratings.<\/p>\n

This is not an argument about\u00a0the superiority of \u201creal-life\u201d<\/a>\u00a0communication over conversations on networked platforms. For a private message on Facebook or Twitter can be just as endearing as a hug or a handwritten note. Nor is this a claim that \u201ctrue\u201d empathy is never staged or performative. For attendance at a loved one\u2019s funeral is, in part, a performance. Paying respect is to show that you care\u2014an outward, public expression of solace. To remain skeptical of our use of social media in its current iteration isn\u2019t to dismiss it as unworthy, but to examine our unquestioned habits exposed by jarring, surreal events, like what happened in Boston.<\/p>\n

But to what extent are sympathy posts shrewd presentations more eager to convey emotional intelligence rather than sincere concern? If the shifting norm\u00a0of social media is to always share more, then would not commenting on Boston indicate insensitivity or apathy? By incentivizing emotive broadcast around trending events, are less emotionally resonant but worthy subjects reflexively disregarded? These questions are not mean-spirited challenges to what many would call genuine emotion. They are inquisitive prods, pressing us to view the systems and incentives that can prize superficiality and crowd out other less loud, less popular, less homogenized human responses.<\/p>\n

Consider the discussion led by philosopher Judith Butler in\u00a0Frames of War<\/i>. She reflects on why some lives are more grievable<\/i> than others.\u00a0Noted<\/a>\u00a0by more than a few journalists and intellectuals, the day that 2 pressure cookers exploded near the finish line of an international footrace\u2014killing 3 and injuring 176\u2014was the same day that a series of car bombs detonated across 6 provinces\u00a0in Iraq<\/a>, taking the lives of 42 and maiming 257. As enlightened democrats, we\u2019d like to think that our brief and infrequent exposure to calamity would still make us more sensitive to the daily, lived-in plight of humans dwelling in a desert war zone. But we know this isn\u2019t true. \u201cSpecific lives cannot be apprehended as injured or lost if they are not first apprehended as living,\u201d Butler writes. The fragility of life plays a role in feeling sympathetic, but it doesn\u2019t fully explain why it\u2019s difficult for us to extend regard to others, especially those who do not look or speak like us.<\/p>\n

Geographic and cultural closeness makes some events more tragic and painful. But closer to home, even before the FBI shootout that led to the citywide manhunt for\u00a0Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an explosion at a West, Texas fertilizer plant took the lives of\u00a014 Americans. Thus, the spectacle of domestic terror, played out on the news and in social media, makes us more attentive in ways that industrial calamity or foreign massacres currently do not.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s concerning about Facebook and Twitter use during disasters, then, is the social pressure to promote awareness along the same lines of sharability, RT-worthiness, and a familiar set of consumer-news demands.<\/p>\n

In her Regarding The Pain Of Others<\/i>, <\/i>the thinker of photography Susan Sontag does not\u00a0<\/i>attempt to dictate which victims deserve our devotion. Nor does she indict us for not being psychologically transformed or compelled to political action after witnessing the gruesome. Rather, like Butler, she invites us to question our cultural reflex where \u201csome people\u2019s sufferings have a lot more interest to an audience than the sufferings of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the logic of social media sharing\u2014especially on Facebook and to a lesser degree on Twitter\u2014we are nudged relentlessly towards the viral. Zuckerberg\u2019s law, when applied to disasters, becomes an overriding impulse: share and comment to inspire maximal stimulation with minimal, frictionless thought. And so, when those who were not high on CNN\u2019s marathon miasma asked: what about the deaths in Iraq or the explosion in Texas? The reason for their perceived lack of coverage became clear: those events weren\u2019t as sharable\/viral\/likable\/worthy-of-(re)tweet.<\/p>\n

This is an impoverished way of steering acknowledgement. By not examining the ethical implications of things like Facebook\u2019s news feed algorithm, we accept, as simple market-truth, that what is shared most is most worthy of our thoughts. Researchers like Eli Pariser believe this creates a filter bubble<\/a> of hyper-personalized selfishness, while others like Evgeny Morozov counter with concerns over \u201calgorithmic paternalism<\/a>,\u201d the danger of forcing tech companies into roles as progressive civic guardians.<\/p>\n

Still, thinkers on both sides of this debate illuminate the risks of ignoring\u00a0how\u00a0the news feed itself, with hidden and subtle\u00a0bias, determines the reach and exposure of certain posts. (This same critique of\u00a0social sharing can be applied to its forerunner\u00a0and competitor,\u00a0Google’s search engine optimization.) As with older forms of news media, this risks entering into a perverse agenda-setting of the moral.\u00a0To accept an attention-grabbing rubric to determine cultural\u00a0significance is to bolster the same kind of news norms that we recognize to be malevolent. These include a preoccupation with the global north, xenophobic privileging\u00a0of\u00a0moneyed\u00a0American interests, highlighting\u00a0pornographic disaster over chronic, pervasive crime, a disregard for victims who are not white, downplaying environmental degradation with no immediate, visible harm.<\/p>\n

If we begin to scrutinize behavior\u00a0generated and visible to us on social media,\u00a0we can become more alert to our own reflexive cruelty and attentive to the misery of those who suffer at\u00a0the bottom\u00a0of news feeds and beyond\u00a0\u201csocial graphs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her penetrating analysis of the Twitter app Vine<\/a>, Whitney Erin Boesel identities an irresponsible use of social technology. The particular vine that Boesel reviews captured the explosion of the first bomb. On an endless loop, the viewer witnesses \u201ca sharable short story of this afternoon\u2019s events that reduces the tragedy of a violent act down to a bright orange flash.\u201d For Boesel, not only do vines of forever-repeating mayhem highlight carnage over context, they also encourage us to document disastrous events as yet another life-moment to be shared, like Facebook has done with nearly every facet of our social lives. \u201cWhat would happen if putting tragedies on Vine became commonplace?\u201d she asks. While Vine is not devoid of news value, Boesel urges us to consider its concealed potential to sterilize and repress shock. Conversely, she underscores the mental distress of consuming grisly, narrative-depleted disaster porn.<\/p>\n

The hashtag \u201c#prayers4boston\u201d also made its way across the Twitter stream. While, theoretically, this hashtag could be used to inspire charitable collections for the victims\u2019 families or as group therapy for tweeps, the hashtag also functioned in a bizarre and disingenuous way. It was, in Twitter\u2019s linguistic shorthand, a crude mechanism to articulate sympathy. Outside of Twitter\u2019s interface, it would be ridiculous to walk up to someone who just lost a spouse, shake hands, and utter the words, \u201chashtag sympathy.\u201d This is precisely what took place within Twitter. Who was the intended audience for #prayers4boston? What of the craven wrongness of attaching the concepts of upvoting and trending to human loss?<\/p>\n

The absurdity continued in photographs depicting Syrians and Iraqi children holding up signs of commiseration. \u201cBoston bombings represent a sorrowful scene of what happens every day in Syria. Do accept our condolences\u201d read one<\/a>. Striking to the viewer that these far-away people are thinking about our domestic despair, the spread of these images by Americans became yet another crass, sympathy performance. These pictures could be interpreted to emphasize the peculiar suffering caused by the ongoing crises in Syria, which has commanded a remarkable lack of consideration. But this is too easy, too convenient. Like the #prayers4boston, to link out these photos is, at best, a kind gesture, but that\u2019s all it is. Spreading these overly-figurative images is only to participate in a meme about sharing sentimentality\u2014as weakly tied to transnational unity as stroking the pound sign on a keyboard.<\/p>\n

After the uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers gave an impassioned, televised plea, writer Max Read<\/a> used harsh sarcasm that perfectly captures how this news would travel through social media. \u201cHilarious Foreign Uncle Becomes Viral Star For Expressing Deep Emotion About Death Caused By Family Members VIDEO.\u201d Instantly mutated into something packaged to be shared, the faux-headline has blatant disregard for those involved, and engages the reader as a sordid, entertainment-consuming drone. And, without much doubt, this hypothetical headline would rocket to the top of our feeds.<\/p>\n

Hamza Shaban writes on Web culture and media studies. He\u2019s on Twitter @PlanetHozz<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Facebook and Twitter, like any other form of communication, can be used to forge solidarity. As philosopher Richard Rorty reminds us in Method, Social Science, and Social Hope, one of the boundless powers of the humanities and of storytelling\u2014novels, journalism, ethnographies, photography, documentaries\u2014is to grow our imaginations so that the norms which would exclude foreigners, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967,10006],"tags":[19926,11512,10824,19924,19906,942,282,732,19925,1343,66,1246,19923,184,19927],"class_list":["post-15446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-author","tag-bombing","tag-boston","tag-butler","tag-disaster-porn","tag-explosion","tag-facebook","tag-porn","tag-social-media","tag-sympathy","tag-texas","tag-theory","tag-tragedy","tag-tragedy-porn","tag-twitter","tag-west"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15446"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15450,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15446\/revisions\/15450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}