News 2020
Collateral detrimentations really do hurt less, study finds
Collateral detrimentations from Allied peacekeeping forces really do hurt less than deaths and injuries from terrorist violence, according to a new study by media expert Dr Bradley Ichneumon.
Dr Ichneumon's new book, It Only Hurts If You Keep Mentioning It: Grief, Pain and Democracy in the Media Age, argues that media coverage of troop deaths and civilian personnel disintegration phenomena has exercised a "democratising influence" on the quality and quantity of grief and agony being experienced.
"Basically, I start from the premise that deaths and other fatalities, from whatever cause, which are covered in the media will provoke an emotional reaction in the particular advertising target group which that media reaches," Dr Ichneumon said today at a press conference and book-signing.
"Therefore, besides the 'direct pain' of the soldier or potential terrorist who is engaged in being detrimentised, there is an additional 'indirect pain' for the audience which hears about it," Dr Ichneumon said.
However, since troop deaths are generally reported on individually, while civilian detrimentations are seen largely as numbers, the "indirect pain" of the media audiences is correspondingly less in the case of civilians, he continued.
"More and more people feeling less and less pain - this is the essence of pain attenuation through a democratic media," said Dr Ichneumon, who is also the author of Islamo-Stalinism: the Liberal Retreat from Enlightenment Values.
"Of course, the tribal structure of Muslim society and its emphasis on the extended family rather than the individual means that direct pain and grief are less individuo-fragmentalised," he continued.
"On the other hand, the mass media in the Muslim world is far less advanced than in the West, so that news of a given death and the resultant indirect pain and grief end up reaching far fewer people even when the Muslim news agencies aren't being bombed."
Dr Ichneumon's book has been praised by ex-BBC director general Andrew Marr as "an invaluable contribution to journalistic self-esteem", and by ex-Guardian editor Allan Fusbudget as "timely, provocative and superbly formatted."
Collateral detrimentations from Allied peacekeeping forces really do hurt less than deaths and injuries from terrorist violence, according to a new study by media expert Dr Bradley Ichneumon.
Dr Ichneumon's new book, It Only Hurts If You Keep Mentioning It: Grief, Pain and Democracy in the Media Age, argues that media coverage of troop deaths and civilian personnel disintegration phenomena has exercised a "democratising influence" on the quality and quantity of grief and agony being experienced.
"Basically, I start from the premise that deaths and other fatalities, from whatever cause, which are covered in the media will provoke an emotional reaction in the particular advertising target group which that media reaches," Dr Ichneumon said today at a press conference and book-signing.
"Therefore, besides the 'direct pain' of the soldier or potential terrorist who is engaged in being detrimentised, there is an additional 'indirect pain' for the audience which hears about it," Dr Ichneumon said.
However, since troop deaths are generally reported on individually, while civilian detrimentations are seen largely as numbers, the "indirect pain" of the media audiences is correspondingly less in the case of civilians, he continued.
"More and more people feeling less and less pain - this is the essence of pain attenuation through a democratic media," said Dr Ichneumon, who is also the author of Islamo-Stalinism: the Liberal Retreat from Enlightenment Values.
"Of course, the tribal structure of Muslim society and its emphasis on the extended family rather than the individual means that direct pain and grief are less individuo-fragmentalised," he continued.
"On the other hand, the mass media in the Muslim world is far less advanced than in the West, so that news of a given death and the resultant indirect pain and grief end up reaching far fewer people even when the Muslim news agencies aren't being bombed."
Dr Ichneumon's book has been praised by ex-BBC director general Andrew Marr as "an invaluable contribution to journalistic self-esteem", and by ex-Guardian editor Allan Fusbudget as "timely, provocative and superbly formatted."
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