Keeping Calm and Carrying On: Dismantling Our Complicity in the Virtual Witnessing of Trauma
By Sameer Khan
If the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic has taught us all anything, it’s that human interaction can transcend physical separation; indeed, long gone are our then-reasonable, now-naïve assumptions that life cannot be continued through a screen. However, as we regularly seem to discover, COVID-19 merely aggravates realities too often experienced by people of color—here, the reality of a racial pandemic whose virulence has wrought systemic damage far beyond the conclusion of 2019.
Ultimately, what we tend to consider a COVID-specific way of life—one drenched in the impulse to doom-scroll and dominated by the omnipresence of social media—is hardly a new experience for marginalized communities, whose lives and bodies have been historically packaged into virtual soundbites and screenshots since the advent of today’s virtual landscape and whose trauma and suffering continue to flood online spaces. Thus, through social media, living vicariously is possible, and to dangerous degrees. It is this sense of harm that is typified by the concept of virtual witnessing, whereby “[a]t the most basic level, one person offers an account of events to another person who was not there” (Richardson, 2017, p. 14). Yet, far from benign is this phenomenon; despite trivializing distance, the virtual witnessing of events—in particular, of incidents of racial and ethnic violence or bigotry—enables a larger “collective memory” of trauma to form, one which can severely stress people of color (Richardson, 2017, p. 15).
The terror of September 11, 2001 is often cited as an inflection point in this history, for “[s]cholarship on the impacts of witnessing traumatic events has grown exponentially since the September 11th attacks” (Tynes et al., 2019, p. 371). From 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to 2013’s Boston Marathon bombing, through rampant media coverage and an ever-attentive cultural consciousness, trauma and suffering have managed to tour areas beyond their origin sites. For the Boston Marathon attacks, specifically, one study found that “acute stress symptoms”—some of which intersected with those corresponding to post-traumatic stress disorder—“in the Boston and New York samples were comparable” (Holman et al., 2013, as cited in Tynes et al., 2019, p. 373).
Though these results appear wildly astonishing, they hardly reflect today’s realities; advances in technology and social media today simply cannot be rivalled. Thus, as we take the temperature of today’s virtual climate—as recordings of police brutality as well as racially- and religiously-motivated hate crimes are circulated with unparalleled ferocity—we must remember that it is no longer 2001, 2005, or 2013. In 2021, a day in the life of a person of color requires interaction with media demeaning their existence and displaying their people’s deaths. Too infrequently are the residual effects of virtual witnessing on people of color’s mental health ever considered. At its surface, reproducing this content might appear harmless or even valuable, but turning a blind eye to this palpable trauma—demanding that people of color keep calm and carry on in the face of it—can be quite destructive. One share becomes two, then three, four, five, which—for a distressed viewer—might just develop a “positive feedback loop” in which traumatic memories are fueled and solidified by the release of “cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine” (Boone et al., 2003, p. 7 as cited in Carter, 2007, p. 32).
Sure, empirically, the witnessing of “viral videos of police shootings […] is associated with depressive and PTSD symptoms among adolescents of color,” but this science only confirms what lived experience has revealed for years (Tynes et al., 2019, p. 375). During last summer’s long-overdue racial reckoning, in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, videos of the murders of Black Americans were practically inescapable—they were glued to television screens, news articles, and social media feeds, all under the guise of activism or necessity. Of course, central to advocacy is awareness, but, as Black sociologist Eve Ewing suggests, ensuring “consent to watching” these videos is just as crucial (as cited in Richardson, 2017, p. 133); at the least, content warnings or disclaimers are fundamentally and morally obligatory (Richardson, 2017, p. 133). Moreover, Mark Luckie, formerly Twitter’s inaugural Manager of Journalism and News, clarifies a similar need to press pause on this relentless exposure, to “escape the ‘litany of hashtags of slain black men and women,’ which traumatized him” (as cited in Richardson, 2017, p. 97). As we rightfully shift the narrative to centering Black voices and experiences, it is these kinds of reflections that must inform how we look to conduct ourselves on social media—to spotlight, in essence, impact over intent.
For communities of color, social media might prove one of the few avenues for proper, accurate representation that is directly controlled by those groups. However, as content solely highlighting sources of trauma for people of color outpace that representation, what remains is fragmented visibility and fractured belonging; what remains is an overwhelming assumption that people of color are only worthy of occupying center stage when their characters have been brutalized and slaughtered, that they are nothing more than their suffering. And although this racial pandemic, derived from centuries of colonization and white supremacy, might lack as clear a vaccine as for its COVID-19 counterpart, understanding the legacy of virtual witnessing and our complicity in it is undoubtedly a first step we must take.
About the Author
Sameer Khan is a first-year student at Harvard College planning on concentrating in History and Science.
References
Carter, Robert. (2007). Racism and Psychological and Emotional Injury: Recognizing and Assessing Race-Based Traumatic Stress. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000006292033
Holman, A. E., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2013). Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(1). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316265110
Richardson, A. V. (2017). Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://search-proquest-com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/socialsciencepremium/docview/1960627751
/8A3FFD85C89C41B3PQ/27?accountid=11311
Tynes, B. M., Willis, H. A., Stewart, A. M., & Hamilton, M. W. (2019). Race-Related Traumatic Events Online and Mental Health Among Adolescents of Color. Journal of Adolescent Health, 65(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.03.006
Ultimately, what we tend to consider a COVID-specific way of life—one drenched in the impulse to doom-scroll and dominated by the omnipresence of social media—is hardly a new experience for marginalized communities, whose lives and bodies have been historically packaged into virtual soundbites and screenshots since the advent of today’s virtual landscape and whose trauma and suffering continue to flood online spaces. Thus, through social media, living vicariously is possible, and to dangerous degrees. It is this sense of harm that is typified by the concept of virtual witnessing, whereby “[a]t the most basic level, one person offers an account of events to another person who was not there” (Richardson, 2017, p. 14). Yet, far from benign is this phenomenon; despite trivializing distance, the virtual witnessing of events—in particular, of incidents of racial and ethnic violence or bigotry—enables a larger “collective memory” of trauma to form, one which can severely stress people of color (Richardson, 2017, p. 15).
The terror of September 11, 2001 is often cited as an inflection point in this history, for “[s]cholarship on the impacts of witnessing traumatic events has grown exponentially since the September 11th attacks” (Tynes et al., 2019, p. 371). From 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to 2013’s Boston Marathon bombing, through rampant media coverage and an ever-attentive cultural consciousness, trauma and suffering have managed to tour areas beyond their origin sites. For the Boston Marathon attacks, specifically, one study found that “acute stress symptoms”—some of which intersected with those corresponding to post-traumatic stress disorder—“in the Boston and New York samples were comparable” (Holman et al., 2013, as cited in Tynes et al., 2019, p. 373).
Though these results appear wildly astonishing, they hardly reflect today’s realities; advances in technology and social media today simply cannot be rivalled. Thus, as we take the temperature of today’s virtual climate—as recordings of police brutality as well as racially- and religiously-motivated hate crimes are circulated with unparalleled ferocity—we must remember that it is no longer 2001, 2005, or 2013. In 2021, a day in the life of a person of color requires interaction with media demeaning their existence and displaying their people’s deaths. Too infrequently are the residual effects of virtual witnessing on people of color’s mental health ever considered. At its surface, reproducing this content might appear harmless or even valuable, but turning a blind eye to this palpable trauma—demanding that people of color keep calm and carry on in the face of it—can be quite destructive. One share becomes two, then three, four, five, which—for a distressed viewer—might just develop a “positive feedback loop” in which traumatic memories are fueled and solidified by the release of “cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine” (Boone et al., 2003, p. 7 as cited in Carter, 2007, p. 32).
Sure, empirically, the witnessing of “viral videos of police shootings […] is associated with depressive and PTSD symptoms among adolescents of color,” but this science only confirms what lived experience has revealed for years (Tynes et al., 2019, p. 375). During last summer’s long-overdue racial reckoning, in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, videos of the murders of Black Americans were practically inescapable—they were glued to television screens, news articles, and social media feeds, all under the guise of activism or necessity. Of course, central to advocacy is awareness, but, as Black sociologist Eve Ewing suggests, ensuring “consent to watching” these videos is just as crucial (as cited in Richardson, 2017, p. 133); at the least, content warnings or disclaimers are fundamentally and morally obligatory (Richardson, 2017, p. 133). Moreover, Mark Luckie, formerly Twitter’s inaugural Manager of Journalism and News, clarifies a similar need to press pause on this relentless exposure, to “escape the ‘litany of hashtags of slain black men and women,’ which traumatized him” (as cited in Richardson, 2017, p. 97). As we rightfully shift the narrative to centering Black voices and experiences, it is these kinds of reflections that must inform how we look to conduct ourselves on social media—to spotlight, in essence, impact over intent.
For communities of color, social media might prove one of the few avenues for proper, accurate representation that is directly controlled by those groups. However, as content solely highlighting sources of trauma for people of color outpace that representation, what remains is fragmented visibility and fractured belonging; what remains is an overwhelming assumption that people of color are only worthy of occupying center stage when their characters have been brutalized and slaughtered, that they are nothing more than their suffering. And although this racial pandemic, derived from centuries of colonization and white supremacy, might lack as clear a vaccine as for its COVID-19 counterpart, understanding the legacy of virtual witnessing and our complicity in it is undoubtedly a first step we must take.
About the Author
Sameer Khan is a first-year student at Harvard College planning on concentrating in History and Science.
References
Carter, Robert. (2007). Racism and Psychological and Emotional Injury: Recognizing and Assessing Race-Based Traumatic Stress. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000006292033
Holman, A. E., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2013). Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(1). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316265110
Richardson, A. V. (2017). Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://search-proquest-com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/socialsciencepremium/docview/1960627751
/8A3FFD85C89C41B3PQ/27?accountid=11311
Tynes, B. M., Willis, H. A., Stewart, A. M., & Hamilton, M. W. (2019). Race-Related Traumatic Events Online and Mental Health Among Adolescents of Color. Journal of Adolescent Health, 65(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.03.006
