Emotions and Responsibilities on Televised Proximal and Distant Suffering, a Comparative Study of the Global South, Western and Diasporic Audiences

Abstract

This study compares the emotional reactions and responsibilities of audiences from the Global South (Nigerians), the West (UK), and Nigerian diasporas in the UK when confronted with both proximal and distant suffering. While some empirical studies show that images of human suffering move audiences, refuting the argument that audiences do not care or suffer from emotional fatigue, little is known about the stance of the Global South and diasporic audience, particularly the extent to which sociocultural value and distance influence them when confronted with proximal and distant suffering. Through a mixed-methods approach that combines a self-completing questionnaire (quantitative) with qualitative focus group discussions, the study reveals a dynamic between Western individualism and Global South communalism alongside cultural clashes among diasporic audiences in response to televised human suffering. Global South and diasporic audiences felt pity for both proximal and distant suffering, while Western audiences primarily felt sadness, illustrating how emotions vary across cultural contexts. While some existing literature argued that distance alters audiences' emotional involvement with televised human suffering, this present study finds that audiences’ emotions become categorised when they are confronted with both proximal and distant sufferings for different reasons. In the Global South, higher emotional arousal occurred for proximal suffering due to the identifiable victim effect (IVE), whereas the identifiable reporter effect (IRE) triggered greater emotional arousal in Western audiences. The diasporic audience, on the other hand, faced some complexities in classifying their emotion between geographical suffering (suffering in their host country) and distant suffering but showed lower emotion on national proximal suffering in their home country.
In taking suffering alleviation responsibility, the finding reveals that audiences seek accountability from those who have caused the suffering or have not done what they were supposed to do, leading to blame games influenced by the type of disaster. For preventable man-made disasters like the Boko Haram insurgency and the Grenfell fire, which were proximal suffering, blame was directed at the government; for natural disaster, which is the Haiti earthquake, which is a distant suffering, the government was partially blamed for lack of preparedness. While participants expressed a willingness to alleviate both proximal and distant suffering, this did not translate into action due to social dynamics, including economic conditions, the nature of the country involved, and systemic issues. The study also found that the media narrative of suffering victims triggers emotional contagion and ethical concerns among the audiences, which further led to highlighting appropriate disaster representation between Western and diasporic audiences. Nonetheless, among the Global South audiences, media ethics was seen as a secondary issue as their primary focus was on combating systemic issues in the country.

Date of Award	15 May 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Edge Hill University
Supervisor	RUXANDRA TRANDAFOIU (Director of Studies) & ZANA VATHI (Director of Studies)