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Myth Of Compassion Fatigue Analysis

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Occasionally, a major disaster strikes people with whom the viewer in an industrialised country can personally identify without difficulty. Jonathan Benthall (1993) suggests that Western media can at times be preoccupied by the fate of a ‘single, identified person such as a boy who has fallen down a well in Italy, or examples such as hostages, hijack victims, or small children whose lives could be saved by expensive advanced surgery’ [p.196]. Although the literature on what motivates charitable giving is relatively sparse, a series of recent studies in decision psychology have produced some interesting findings that support Benthall’s statement. Small and Lowenstein (2007) conducted a field experiment that demonstrated when asked to contribute …show more content…

David Campbell (2012) argues not necessarily. In his essay, ‘The Myth of Compassion Fatigue (2012)’ he discusses a few observations that suggest the public still respond quite eagerly to calls for charity; “In Britain there are 166,000 charities that received donations totaling £10 billion in 2009. The British public’s response to disasters like the 2010 Haiti earthquake shows that the willingness to act on empathy for the victims of natural disasters is still considerable even when they are distant.” [p.22]. He argues that here is no absence of compassion as expressed in charitable giving, but that, however, is not to say that all issues are responded to equally. Campbell states ‘there are clearly differential responses, but these do not add up to the generally diminished response named ‘compassion fatigue’’[p.23]. For the specific charities being discussed in this paper, donations, although substantial, are both increasing and decreasing making it difficult to decipher whether compassion fatigue is potentially a factor. For example, Oxfam received £98.6 million of donations in the year of 2013, but this increased to £100.8 million in 2014. However, Save the Children, received more donations in 2013, £109.7 million than in 2014 where it decreased to £107.7 million. However, when it comes to finance, many factors have to be considered, and it would be unfair to suggest that donations fell for Save The Children purely due to potential compassion fatigue by the British public. The main problem with the idea of compassion fatigue in relation to photography (especially regarding early Sontag and the on- going Moeller) is that they constructed their arguments with little if any evidence. As noted above, the evidence that is available demonstrates that compassion is far from diminishing and that the public at large still gives generously, if differentially, to charitable appeals using familiar and repeated imagery to foster a

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