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  • Essay / Why massacres have become yesterday's news while entertaining topics are at the forefront

    More than 6,700 people died in the latest global humanitarian crisis in 2018. From political debates to questioning the With the involvement of the UN, the Rohingya crisis has become the cause of much discussion. Thousands of news networks covered updates from channels around the world. However, after a few months, the media reduced their coverage on the subject, in search of another attractive sensation. Massacres and brutality seemed to fade from people's minds as they began to focus on more entertaining topics. Eventually, many began to wonder if repetitive screening for violence could play a role in how people respond to inhumane things. Due to constant violence and decreased responsiveness to alarms, people are becoming desensitized to humanitarian issues. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayNetflix, TV shows, and social media are just one of the many diversions people consume today. The outlets as such provide distractions to viewers around the world at any time of the day. Although media facilitates communication, it undoubtedly brings about imminent changes in people's minds and behavior. When witnessing horrific activities, reactions such as fear, worry, and disgust should probably be common among people. However, studies show that the more consistent violent images become in an individual's daily entertainment, the less responsive they are to the brain's alarm stimuli. Many psychologists predict that "frequent and violent media exposure [could] contribute to a blunted response." Major shootings, massacres or group brutality will appear as a common occurrence which will indicate the seriousness of a situation to these individuals. Unknowingly, emotion carrying parts of the brain such as the amygland will begin to absorb the entertainment stream as a stimulus, thereby undermining real-life events. In a 2010 study of media exposure by psychologist Laura Stockdale, 25 participants were repeatedly shown either a normal or violent film and asked to complete a gender discrimination task using faces. The results concluded that constant visualization led to the suppression of “implicit emotional processing.” Stockdale's observations describe a specific situation that a group of people endured after being constantly subjected to various violent films. With each repeated screening, participants' judgment shifted from less critical to dismissive. The study also suggested a notable decrease in stimulation of the prefrontal cortex, the analyzing part of the human brain. Similarly, another study was conducted by researchers using violent films with similar concepts. Participants were asked to watch nine violent and comical scenes and then ask which scenes or victims concerned them. The experiment concluded that gradually, feelings of sympathy toward the film's characters diminished as "significant effects were seen on participants' initial reports of sympathy." The study's growth model resulted in a curvilinear trend representing a decrease in participants' alarm reactions to the victims' deaths. This obviously shows that the continuous representation of an activity leads the brain to adapt to it.