(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is easy to become tired and exhausted when frightening news takes over everyday life. Maintaining such attention over time – and coping with its failure – is one side of the kind of fatigue that war brings with it. How can we as an audience avoid such reduced attention? I try with this personal Ukrainian narrative:
"We can no longer accept so many texts about Ukraine," said our media partner abroad. "Our readers are tired." As of this writing, it has been several months since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the war is still front-page news in many media outlets around the world. But other political issues and aspects of life deserve our attention – like the reversal of Roe v. Wade, China's handling of covid-19, or other events. Dozens of images of Russian atrocities and hundreds of news stories from Ukraine dominate with a sort of backdrop in today's everyday life for an accustomed and news-weary audience.
The news feed
At the same time, journalists are becoming all the more eager to find "bloody" and unbearable stories that overlap with existing war reporting. At the end of March, the Ukrainian writer, documentary film and media producer Alik Sardarian mentioned this tendency in an essay for openDemocracy. As the war continues, more and more journalists are asking for reporting trips to places in Ukraine where there is action [hotspots, ed. note], although this poses a huge risk for Ukrainian organizers: "Lviv is no longer enough for them », claims Sardarian. The journalists do it because the readers are fed up with the same old images from dilapidated slums, of families in railway stations or other scenes with refugees – quite frankly: "poverty porn".
But people can't just put their lives on hold – as Ukrainians are forced to do. Petty political battles, sporting events, even cake recipes pop up in your news feed on a par with the war in Ukraine, and together this creates a rather absurd, fragmented picture of our times. Unfortunately, audience fatigue is natural and inevitable.
It is impossible for us to perceive, take in and sympathize with all kinds of loss equally strongly for several months in a row.
What for one may be a unique moment in a disaster, may be perceived by others as yet another sad story on TV. This fatigue is the unspoken aspect of war that I encounter not only in conversations with foreign colleagues, but also among Ukrainian citizens in the country. It is impossible for us to perceive, take in and sympathize with all kinds of loss equally strongly for several months in a row.
But why does the media market have to be so fickle? Is there still room for stories that can challenge one's world view? I think so. I also think that such stories can do without gloomy images.
Seemed surreal
I remember March 21 well. It was three weeks after the invasion. People in Ukraine's capital continued to live under limited but constant shelling, but nothing significant happened.
I was lying on the floor of my old apartment in Kiev listening to a podcast from The Guardian. The apartment was not renovated. The Soviet-style corridor with chandeliers and lamps from the early 1960s had been temporarily used as a bedroom. The podcast episode was about the US midterm elections and how the election would be affected by the war in Ukraine.
In the podcast, a former politician wondered whether the Ukrainians' plea for arms would be repulsive on the US political left. In the podcast, they also discussed people's reactions to rising gas prices, the perspective of worldwide inflation and a few other issues.
I had a sudden epiphany, a strong feeling that my whole being was – most involuntarily – shaped by the geopolitical landscape. I was like a character in an average documentary film: Here I am, the bilingual child of my Soviet-born, Russian-speaking parents, hiding from Russian rockets in the corridor, listening to Politics Weekly America while staring at the Soviet loss in the twilight.
The podcast host and guest talked about terms and things that were mostly concepts, that had no physical properties – in my headphones I could still hear the real, recurring explosions outside drowning out their banter as I tried to sleep. Their voices seemed so distant, their reporting style so smooth and superficial that it made me think: One of our countries is simply not real. "Do they live in reality?" I asked myself. “And if so, where am I? What is this place called where gas prices, clothes, goods and amenities don't matter?”
These two dimensions—a war zone and a peaceful zone—for a moment came so close to each other that they both suddenly seemed surreal.
I think days like that define a kind of boundary, where you lose what can make you express yourself fully to those who didn't experience the same moment as you.
Random anxieties
A few months ago I studied theater history and creative writing and managed to find things that have no practical purpose but are tangible and real. On March 21, I discovered that everything I had ever read and learned had lost its appeal. Not one of them – from Jean Baudrillard to Pulitzer winners – could say anything about my reality. They have nothing to contribute; they don't fit in.
At the same time, I discovered a series of deeply rooted and almost random anxieties that surfaced and invisibly planted fear and dread in my everyday life.
I'm afraid I won't recover from all the hate.
Here is the list of them:
I fear that the whole world will forget us, while we remain isolated in a protracted conflict.
I'm afraid I won't be able to maintain friendships with people who haven't been exposed to the war.
I am afraid that every glass of wine that will be raised in jubilation in the future will feel like "a party during the plague".
I'm afraid that any dress that isn't sewn out of necessity, but just to look nice, will never fit me again.
I am afraid that every war – wherever it breaks out – will somehow be "my war".
I'm afraid I won't recover from all the hate.
I'm afraid that the war has put the person I am in pause mode.
It is important to understand – without accompanying images – that this is only a brief visit to a state that many people, especially those who have been raped, robbed or badly injured, have acquired over years or decades. For many, any return to a so-called normal existence with lifestyle advice will be impossible.
It seems that something essential has been taken away from the people of Ukraine, and that is the very basic notion that the world can be a safe place.
The unacceptable duration
While physical injuries are easy to detect and serve as testimony to the horrors and atrocities of war, the trauma and anxiety people carry are, perhaps less visible, but more long-lasting.
Contrary to the nature of the media and its economy of attention, war tends to reveal its scariest face and greatest consequences over time. And it's the unacceptable duration that matters – more than the shocking fact that it happened in the first place.
Millions of people risk having their traumas hushed up and normalized.
Millions of people risk having their traumas silenced and normalised, despite extensive media attention during the very first weeks of the war. Of course, many pictures are now produced that are seen, along with facts, stories and statistics. But what can they really show us? Can they reveal people's news fatigue? Do we risk supporting the tendency to bury our heads in the sand because it's not your war?
Unlike local media and newsrooms struggling to survive, the largest media organizations have the resources and power to adapt, and they can also make readers' worldviews more complex. Despite the rules of the attention economy, which appears as the power of the media, big media houses should be able to find ways to remind us how fragile a peaceful life is: This is the reality of those like us, with whom we should have some empathy. You don't necessarily have to give away everything you have to the disadvantaged – but your view of the modern world should not be naive.
After all, the media industry and the owners behind it should remember that their core mission as a public news channel is to inform in order to engage, and broaden our perspectives – not alienate. Why is this important? Because the tendency to forget something that is no longer viral and captures our attention is one of the reasons wars are accepted.
© Eurozine / Gwaramedia
Olena Myhashko
Myhashko is the editor of gwaramedia.com, an independent website that writes about social changes in Ukraine, mainly from Kharkiv and its surroundings, but also the rest of the country. During the early days of the war, Gwara Media developed a fact-checking bot, Perevirka, that people could use to verify news. According to Gwara's manifesto, they are concerned with reporting reality, disseminating local news, and they want to "restore justice". They produce articles, short video films and other digital content.