"My view of the world versus reality, they go far apart!" : Audience responses on Facebook towards the Nice attack in 2016

Abstract: When a person drives a truck into the middle of a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, horrifying images, and witnessing stories is spread around the world. The Swedish nationwide evening tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet publishes the story during one week on their Facebook page, resulting in thousands of comments. This paper examines the interactive audience responses on social media towards the encounter of suffering caused in the Nice attack, 14th July 2016. Using framing analysis in combination with a qualitative content analysis the study focuses on 702 comments provided on Aftonbladets Facebook wall. This study analyses the opinions towards suffering visible in the material during the first days of the attack. Frame theory and media witnessing are used as theoretical framework. The analysis reveals four frames: the moral conflict frame where people criticize the witnessing by media, the reality conflict frame where people emphasizes suffering as a global issue, the justice conflict frame where suffering is discussed in terms compassion as something you deserve, and the emotional frame where people’s feelings of witnessing suffering is in focus. Previous research says that audiences are more likely to feel compassion towards victims if they can see themselves in them and/or if there is a short cultural and spatial distance between them, and this study has come to the same conclusion. However, this study contributes with knowledge about how the social media users negotiate compassion (the justice conflict frame and reality conflict frame) and focus on the questions of ethics when it comes to distant suffering (the moral conflict frame and emotional frame).