Narrative Appeal: Social Constraints of Empathy and Hegemonic Influence

Some blame of the marked disparity between coverage of stories and audience reception of narrative discourses must go to the generally immutable need for receivers of news to identify with a specific character. The emergence of the late Neda Agha-Soltan as a quintessential victim of oppressive an Iranian old guard, was enabled by the dramatic footage captured on video-phones by civilians near her (Fahti, 2009) as well as the fact that the bullet hit her in her torso, not her head, thus preserving her beauty, even in death (Fischer, 2010). While the feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez are most frequently of young, attractive women, evidence of their deaths are generally recognized only upon the discovery of “decomposed bodies...often unidentifiable” (Livingston, 2004, p. 59), so there is a scarcity of photographic journalistic representation of the victims as living people, not just as corpses.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar formulated a numerical limit to the number of people that an individual is capable of having personal contacts (Bialic, 2007). There must also be a limit to the number of people that an individual can deeply empathize with, as opposed to merely pitying on a rationally moral basis. The latter is seldom as effective as the former in galvanizing support for a cause.

There is also no doubt that the preferences of audience members can be largely influenced by the cumulative manipulation of hegemonic influences, and subsequent reinforcement by group mentality in a viral fashion, as evidenced by the effectiveness of astroturfing. These more surreptitious modes of influencing news content have been criticized in detail by voices such as Chomsky (Achbar, 1992). Proponents of deeper investigations into the murders in Ciudad Juarez suspect that their detractors are “a front for the state government” (Livingston, 2004, p. 64).

References

Achbar, M. (producer). (1992). Manufacturing consent: Noam Chomsky and the media. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com

Bialic, C. (2007, Novermber 16). Sorry, you may have gone over your limit of network friends. The Wall Street Journal, p. B1. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119518271549595364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Fahti, N. (2009, June 23). In a death seen around the world, a symbol of Iranian protests. The New York Times, p. A1. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23neda.html?_r=1

Fischer, A. (2010). Global media narratives in the digital age (lecture). Binghamton University.

Livingston, J. (2004). Murder in Juarez: Gender, sexual violence, and the global assembly line. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 25, 59-76.