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Watching the full coverage of domestic terrorism can lead people to develop the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. These symptoms, in turn, can cause people to look for more disrupt the coverage in the future, creating a cycle that can be difficult to break.
For a study published today in the journal Progress of scienceRebecca Thompson, a psychologist at the University of Irvine, and her team spent three years collecting survey data from more than 4,000 US residents. The team interviewed these residents four times and asked them about media consumption and mental health. The cycle began with the bombings of the Boston Marathon in 2013. (A previous study showed that people exposed to six hours of daily coverage of this attack in the week following the attack were more stressed than those who They found it really.) Thompson and his team found that the more people saw the attacks, the more upset they were six months later and the more upset they were with future negative events.
"When something bad happens, you want to know what's going on so you can formulate an answer," says Thompson. It is normal to try to collect information in these circumstances, "but the problem is that when people see a lot of really painful images and sensationalist content in the media, it does not necessarily make them better. . " and leads to more concern about other terrible events occurring in the future. Those who were most concerned about future negative events were those who used the most media coverage of the Orlando 2016 Disco shootings, which made them even more anxious.
Today's study focuses on these two acts of national terrorism, but the team is also interested in whether the same patterns apply to natural disasters, such as hurricanes. Thompson began to be interested in the psychological effects of natural disasters in 2011 as a result of a tornado on his campus. "Being part of this community at such a life-changing event really sparked my interest in people's response to community trauma," she says. Earlier this year, Thompson co-authored a study on the negative psychological consequences for people who spent more time following information on Hurricane Irma.
According to Thompson, there are still many questions. First of all, we do not yet know what kind of media (for example, television or online) is the most dangerous, or whether sounds and images, together or separately, are the most painful. For now, we must remember that it is good to consume the media in moderation, because it is natural to worry about not knowing what is happening. "But the bottom line is that what you do not want to do is get completely absorbed in this coverage and spend the whole day tweaking Twitter and getting the news on the cable to air with the same content. video, "again and again," says Thompson. This could have lasting effects.
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