Online empathy in the wake of Orlando

Eliza Mills Jun 17, 2016
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A man lays down roses to honor each victim of the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando as people gather outside of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.  Monika Graff/Getty Images

Online empathy in the wake of Orlando

Eliza Mills Jun 17, 2016
A man lays down roses to honor each victim of the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando as people gather outside of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.  Monika Graff/Getty Images
HTML EMBED:
COPY

In the wake of a tragedy like last weekend’s mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, people come together to react — to process, to grieve, to raise funds, to push for change. And a lot of this coming together happens online.

Facebook news feeds fill with articles and stories — photos, videos, opinions. Twitter is flooded with updates, friends reach out through social media, and the news seems amplified by algorithms. 

Then, often, as quickly as it began, it ends. The rapid pace of the news cycle takes over and the social feed moves on to the next topic. But do our minds?

The social media landscape has had an enormous impact on global response to tragedy. To learn more about it, Marketplace Weekend spoke to Karen North,  director of USC Annenberg’s Digital Social Media program.

To listen to the full interview, tune in using the audio player above.

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