Study finds tragedy news makes us unhappy and hungry

A new study released Wednesday may well reaffirm your worst fears of stuck to Twitter or cable news during a mass tragedy like the last shot in a school. This suggests that being exposed to media coverage of these events can create a vicious emotional circle that not only despairs you, but also makes you more likely to tune into the next widely circulated atrocity.

For their study, published in Science Advances, researchers at the University of California at Irvine used KnowledgePanel from the GfK polling company, a service that offers small cash rewards to users for every telephone or online survey they lead. Although the service has its limitations (people who regularly participate in paid surveys may not be representative of the general population), it has also allowed researchers to study the same group of people over a long period of time. period with relative ease, in this case about three years.

They interviewed nearly 4,500 people shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, which left three people dead and more than 250 injured. These volunteers were asked about their emotional reaction to the attack, their media coverage of the attack and their concern about the tragic events ahead.

As other studies have shown, those most exposed to tragedy in the media were more likely to feel stressed, even when they were interviewed again six months later. Two years after the bombing, they were even more likely to worry about the future. And when they were interviewed at least five days after the June 2016 Pulse Club shootout in Orlando, Florida, those same people were also more likely to report watching the media coverage of this event. As before, people who listened the most to Pulse shooting were more likely to feel distressed.

"These findings reinforce previous work in our laboratory (and others) that consistently demonstrated an association between event-related media consumption and stress symptoms as a result of a collective trauma such as". An event of mass violence, "wrote senior author Rebecca Thompson, psychologist. at the UCI, said Gizmodo by e-mail. "Our study is unique in that it is the first to show the pattern of repeated media exposure to mass violence and distress over time and over multiple events among a broad cross-section of people. followed for several years. "

It's fair to wonder how responsible social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube could help fuel this cycle, as they often amplify our worst impulses and regularly allow bad actors to spread false stories or misleading public tragedy (including the recent fire at Notre Dame Cathedral). Thompson and his team have taken into account the different ways in which people make themselves known, interviewing volunteers about their exposure to seven different sources of media consumption, including social media. But they did not reveal the frequency with which people received news from a single point of sale, nor the individual impact that these different points of sale could have on our collective psyche.

"Such a question is the subject of ongoing work in our lab," Thompson said.

Depressing as this study may be, it is not the first to show a similar "contagion effect" in the media. Research has consistently shown that media coverage of a celebrity's suicide may increase the risk that viewers will have suicidal thoughts or attempt self-harm. But just as public health organizations have created guidelines for reporting suicides to the media (although this is often not the case), Thompson says there are means for the media to alleviate the desperation caused by their audiences.

"For the media, we recommend a moderation of the sensationalist aspects of the news coverage of these events, so as not to cause excessive concern and distress among viewers," she said. .

Viewers themselves can take steps to protect their emotional state when the next mass tragedy inevitably occurs.

"For those who are at home, we recommend greater vigilance when choosing the media coverage that they consume," she said. "Using the media to obtain information during a mass tragedy is not psychologically harmful in itself, but not being allowed to be absorbed by these events when they occur could minimize some of the distress we see in our respondents. "