Read how, through aid campaigns, social media actively shapes global perceptions but still underscores Western-centric dynamics.
On February 6, 2023, at 04:17 a.m., the people of southern Turkey [1] and northern Syria woke up to one of the most devastating disasters of the century [2]. The deadliest earthquake in Turkey’s history, the Mw 7.8 earthquake, struck an area of about 350,000 km2 [3]. Indescribable devastation, inadequate rescue efforts, and support for donation campaigns were immediately at the top of the mainstream and social media agenda. The earthquake was the headliner of the national and international media for days after the disaster. Photographs showing the destruction of buildings and the loss of people, maps showing fault lines, and visuals calling for aid campaigns have become the primary means of thinking and feeling about the earthquake.
In the 21st century, the level of information and representation of disasters reached its peaks, in particular, thanks to social media, which helped the creation of new imaginations. Simon Cottle, professor of Media and Communication at Cardiff University, offers a rethinking of the media in a highly intertwined world, specifically looking at “disasters from the inside out and outside in.” It is crucial to look at how, why, and in what ways this interaction takes place. Using the latest example of the February 6 earthquake [4], this article sheds light on the role of graphics in fundraising and aid campaigns and provides a framework for how social media refers to the harrowing situations in suffering distant lands. Thinking about why and for whom aid campaigns are visualized in specific ways points at social media’s role as a moral educator and opens up how perceptions of disaster develop in other regions and if the circulation of news related to the devastating events creates a broader transcultural “we.”
As the building blocks of media, photography brings indisputable visibility to disasters. The fundraising efforts, meanwhile, get a more financial and realistic turn on social media, and aid agencies rely on that because of the level of accessibility it offers. While the images of rescue teams working on rescue operations invite people to donate, they do not necessarily call people for help. They might show the earthquake’s devastation, but reaching more people to donate becomes a primary objective through compelling graphics. Those examples demonstrate and compare the level of destruction so that people from other regions (usually wealthier, “more Western”) can feel and understand the situation.
The traditional media’s representation informs people about the event and humanitarian assistance. However, social media offer a “civilian surge” that might rely on “unverified” and “insecurely” sourced information flow to the public. Thus, social media platforms such as Twitter (currently X), TikTok, or Instagram provide and aggregate the speed of humanitarian efforts. Their framing can demonstrate the lack of state efforts, inadequate help, and the increasing need for monetary assistance. Naturally, it provides a quick response to people’s basic needs.
Corinne Lysandra Mason, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mount Royal University, argues that humanitarian aid cannot be separated from the relationship between Westerners and others. People who create these graphics aim specifically for Western audiences who would sympathize with desperate others.
Simple graphics sustain the emotional appeal for the suffering of disaster victims and also carry the response to urgent needs because they rely on the moral spectatorship that can create the transregional commonalities and solidarity.” For instance, the graphic Help Turkey, posted by turkishdictionary, a popular Instagram account with 1.1 million followers, demonstrates how big 10 Euros can be for earthquake victims (see figure on the left). It creates an environment for action beyond wishful thinking “because it can make a difference.” While they are effective for more interaction with the situation, they also recreate the already established knowledge about the separating lines. These examples do not hide their exclusively Western-oriented intention. It clearly targets Westerners to imagine and feel that suffering far away.
Moral education does not only show that the Turkish people need even small amounts of donations. It focuses on the comparisons too. The Western communities are invited to feel something over situations that will never happen in their own country. Instead of restricting the suffering only to the earthquake victims, it takes it to the global level. How Big is the Earthquake Destruction Zone, a series of Instagram visuals, shared thousands of times, penetrates people’s imagination. If Help Turkey does not provide enough space for their world of thought, these graphics take it to another level, to their own countries (click through figure below). Instead of just focusing on the loss of human life, they also visualize how life has become unbearable by showing the infrastructural problems in such an immense area. As Cottle mentions, these graphics make “moral infusion” for distant lands because they would be more legible. Consequently, one would anticipate a greater emotional resonance and comprehension in this context.
These examples aim at making the event imaginable and graspable for everyone, creating an interaction beyond borders via thinking about the event in people’s own periphery. As Lilie Chouliaraki, professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, points out, as the viewer looks from a distance, they refer back to their own safe world. Its safety comes from the examples given as purely hypothetical. Similar to the representation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which is made with “implicit distance,” the same is true for the February 6 earthquake in Turkey. The production of visuals follows the expectations of international audiences, because of the impossibility of framing the disaster without picking an anticipated side. This is precisely the reason why Turks in the diaspora shared these images in a hurry. Urgent needs require urgent solutions, and discourse-making can be ignored. Disasters are used as a means of communication from inside to outside, which builds upon the transculturation of the catastrophe, albeit unequally.
The effects of the February 6 earthquake continue to be the most severe for the people in the region. Tens of thousands of people have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their cities, and the lives of millions of people have been irrevocably changed. Even though it is one of the strongest and deadliest earthquakes of the century, it lost its headliner status in the global media after the first week. This is, of course, no surprise. The world goes on, lives change, and other tragedies happen elsewhere. However, this disaster provided opportunities to reflect on how social media approached the reflection on tragedy. Taking on this role as a means of moral education, social media invites Western audiences to a cause worthy of attention, and graphics on fundraising efforts help people to pay attention to distant suffering in a more realistic and calculable way. However, they were more effective in speeding up the relief efforts for the earthquake victims because the visuals helped create a positive public spectacle, which increased the earthquake’s visibility for more people. Still, as this earthquake highlighted, the visual language through graphics does not move away from the already established Western-Other distinction.
Endnotes
[1] The official name of Turkey was changed to Türkiye. There is something about this name change that does not sit well with me because it was made suddenly and as a strange political decision by Erdogan’s government, and I am not sure if I am settled with that decision and reasoning. I still continue to say Turkey out of habit. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds
[2] As of July 21, 2023, the confirmed number of deaths is 50,738 in Turkey and 8476 in Syria, which makes it the fifth deadliest earthquake of the 21st century.
[3] As with the 1939 Erzincan earthquake, the strongest natural disaster (Mw 7.8) struck Turkey since the republic’s foundation in 1923.
[4] The earthquake is called the Turkey-Syria earthquake in global media outlets, but Turkish ones usually use Kahramanmaraş depremleri (Kahramanmaras earthquakes), named after the city. I will instead use the February 6 earthquake because I realized everyone in Turkey talks about the date and remembers the event through the date. The Turkish collective memory already chose the date as national mourning and remembered the earthquake on February 6 as they did for the previous immense destruction in the August 17 earthquake in 1999. Since it became part of the memory and significantly impacted most people’s lives, whether physically or mentally, in Turkey, this date gained, if I borrow Pierre Nora’s term, a “lieux de memoire” status. It would have a longer historical significance, spanning decades or maybe even centuries.
Resources
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