HAVE you ever imagined what worldwide media coverage with 24/7 news channels supported by social media during the Middle Ages would look like? News channels would not have had time to flash commercials because of the need to report all the epidemics killing millions of people around the world, the burning of hundreds of witches and heretics, and rulers killing their closest of kin to safeguard their thrones not to forget the continuous coverage of wars, genocides, and famines of course. Many people from different religions and countries who lived during these times definitely felt like it was the end of the world even with the blessed ignorance of the horrific events occurring across the world. Some people would argue that the world has become a much better place since then as a result of the medical advancement and increasing awareness of human rights. However, all you have to do now is watch the news continuously for a couple of days and it would still seem like the world is coming to an end. Some psychologists assert that pessimism and a feeling of a bewildering helplessness are some of the side effects of negative news and exposure to violence in the media, which could even trigger depression and anxiety to those who are susceptible to suffering from these conditions. In reality, however, the world has not gone completely mad, but the problem is that we can hear, read, and see about every single piece of bad news even in countries we cannot locate on the map. The sensationalism and negativity of the news is not to be attributed entirely to hidden agendas of different political partisans or the fact that channels all over the world are competing to attract more viewers after they have created news channels that are working around the clock; but viewers also hold part of the blame because in actuality negative news do attract more viewers. Our interest in hearing and remembering bad news is what psychologists call “negativity bias” in which they found that our brains tend to engage faster in processing the information when it is negative. The researchers, Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka, at McGill University in Canada conducted an experiment on how people relate to the news and the result of their research proved this phenomenon. In the experiment, the participants were asked to read the news for ‘eye tracking study' in order to reduce bias. The result was that the participants most of the time chose bad news over good ones although when asked they answered that they preferred good news, but it was the media's fault because they emphasized the bad news. ‘Negativity bias' does not occur because we as human beings take pleasure in other people's misery, or most of us at least, but rather it is considered by scientists and psychologists as an evolutionary mechanism that humans developed in order to stay away from danger. Recently, many people in social media are trying consciously to combat this phenomenon by looking at the world as a half full glass instead of half empty. They are looking for the ‘helpers' and happy moments even in the most tragic circumstances. This has been evident after the stampede outside of Makkah that resulted in a tragic death of 769 pilgrims and injured 934 during Haj. While inquiries and investigations had to be made, the videos and images of the deceased that flooded the media were recognized early on by many people as being insensitive and inconsiderate to the deceased themselves and their families. Instead, people started giving their respectable condolences and putting up pictures of those who were still helping the pilgrims to support those who suffered loss and to maintain the morale of the numerous men and women who were helping the pilgrims as well as to those who were still performing the pilgrimage. Our hunger for negative news feed the greed and serve the agenda of many news channels creating a cycle of negativity, which could make us feel like our contributions will not make any difference in the world. There is goodness in the world hopefully more than evil and we should know about it. Learning about different groups of people solely from the news headlines could make us perceive them through a negative lens that is overshadowed by stereotypes and generalizations not to mention the element of a hostile media effect when each group of people accuses the other as being biased against the other side. Africans, Muslims, and people on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have been few of many groups who suffered from these negative effects, which will be further explored in the next article.
