European Refugee Crisis

The European Refugee crisis was covered by many news sources, including The Washington Post that we covered in class. The Waypoint is a visual journey through the lesbos, which is the gateway to Europe. When you look at the page you see a white arrow pointing to the right. This automatically draws the reader in with curiosity which makes you want to keep clicking on more of the article. There is a feature of even listening when the short clips are playing. This is a very visual way of looking into the European Refugee Crisis, which helps put the audience in the situation where they can grasp an understanding of the true crisis that happened. The information is laid out in a clean form in which the audience can receive the information in small parts so it is not overwhelming.

The short videos will play and go through the journey, then you come across a short reading and are forced to pick your interactive journey. This also helps process the information easier and more concise. When the audience According to TeleSur News, Europe saw almost one million refugees in 2015. It shows real footage of the crisis and exactly what happened during that time. Unlike what really happened during the Refugee Crisis, there is a choice of what the journey looks like for the user. The information really is embedded after the video visuals are played while reading the facts of the crisis. I find this interesting because not usually are we given the opportunity to learn about something like this with such personal clips that make you understand the extremity of what was happening at that time.

I believe this new source is a good example of global compassion discourse that we discussed in class. The media exposes photographs of wars, massacres, and other crimes against violence which is playing a big role in giving publicity to the human suffering that is happening around us. An example we can see of this is when we look at The Washington Post on the European Refugee Crisis. It shows multiple images of what it was like to go through the refugee crisis as if you were living it. The different paths you can take is a personal choice depending on the reader, but it still gives the publicity to human suffering. Today, global compassion discourse frames our thinking about the violence and the many conflicts in our world today. The New York Times also gives an examples of global compassion discourse by having an article published, “Europe’s Refugee Crisis, in Pictures.” This illustrates a perfect example of the global compassion discourse by showing photographs of violence and suffering during the European Refugee Crisis. The article even was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography by four photographers by the names of Mauricio Lima, Sergey Ponomarev, Tyler Hicks, and Daniel Etter.

On the other hand, The List shows a list of the deaths that happened during the refugee that are heartbreaking to read. According to BBC News, the European leaders met to discuss the Refugee Crisis and their initial plan was to create a new border. That was the only plan at the time where that the leaders were discussing to find a solution to the problem they were faced with. On the list of documented deaths, the date, name, age, gender, region of origin, and cause of death are given. This is a visual in itself without any photographs being used because the audience can see how many lives were lost during the Refugee Crisis. This is an example of compassion fatigue that we discussed in class because this source of news does not show any graphics, but numerous names of people who lost their lives during this time.

Compassion fatigue is characterized by a gradual lessening of compassion over time, even though this list does not have any photographs on it does not make it any less important or “news worthy.” There was a great deal of news covered on this topic therefore a large number of reports on suffering might tire out the audience, but this is a different kind of news article that could intrigue many readers. Less people might be interested in looking that this because when you first take a glance it does not seem like much, but when you get into the list you see all of the information that is presented from the refugee crisis.