Likes to charge, reblogs to cast 🤞
Sorry to bring back up the Titan submersible, but I find it fascinating in a very morbid way. Mostly in terms of the news. This will be the media student in me talking but to me, it’s a perfect example of so many of Galtung and Ruge’s news values. I’ll also be looking at the migrant boat that sunk off the coast of Greece for similar comparison and why an American centric website would probably see more news relating to the submersible.
Put simply, one of Galtung and Ruge’s news values is proximity, aka how close to home it was and how meaningful it is to the people there. Since the submersible launched from Newfoundland, Canada would’ve gotten more news stories about the submersible. Meanwhile, the boat with the immigrants was found off the coast of Greece, with more stories about it there. Since the USA is closer to Canada than Greece, they got more stories about the sub than the boat.
Another value is currency. This is why me, a Brit, got more news coverage on the boat for the first few days. The UK has a known immigration problem and some really dodgy laws about it (basically in most circumstances you can only apply for a permit once you’re in the country but entering the country without a permit is illegal, so it’s a catch 22), so something about immigration would always be more relevant. However, the antithesis recency would affect how in the last few hours of the sub being missing when the air was thought to be running out (so morning and afternoon of 22nd June) there were more stories on the sub.
A fourth value is uniqueness. Sadly, a migrant ship sinking with people dying and going missing is not an uncommon thing nowadays. A maritime disaster involving billionaires touring the Titanic? Never happened before, I hope it will never happen again (and it most likely will not). Of course the news will focus on something that hasn’t happened before - when will they get the chance to do it?
There’s also the values of Elite People. These people were billionaires. The people on the migrant ship were most likely just normal unnoteworthy people. And also recency - the Messenia boat occurred in the 14th June, and by the time the debris of the boat had been discovered it has already been a week.
I think it is important we take these news values into consideration and also how we as a community on Tumblr can see how we played right into these. An American website with a large American usership would naturally gravitate towards an American story, no matter how global it claims to be. In addition, it’s unusual enough with such strange circumstances that jokes and criticisms were bound to occur. The continuity (another news value) of the story with the search was also intriguing, as we saw it play out first hand with the initial disappearance, the potential signals, the discovery of the wreckage. Add in a level of expectedness (another news value - these people would either be found or not, and let’s be honest they were more likely to be dead than alive) and we have a perfectly newsworthy story to top the trending page for a few days.
It’s something I find fascinating, how despite people saying we should focus on the Messenia migrant boat disaster, we were still echoing the news perfectly on the site. One thing I’ve noted is that I didn’t really see anybody mentioning it before the Titan set out, but once the searching started it started becoming more relevant and trending a little below it. This isn’t a call to do better, this is just something I’ve noticed.
If there’s any saving light, out of the estimated 750 (maximum) of migrants, 104 have been confirmed alive and rescued. And I’m so happy for that.
Listen so I know it turned out to be false but in my heart the Logitech controller survived after all
It’s because no woman was dumb enough to get in that thing…
Oh boy...I see the Destiel meme is hard at work...😬😬😬
you know some shit is going down when 3 of the trending tags on tumblr have the destiel breaking news meme as the top post
Wonderful! A group of rich people died! Let’s dance on graves; I’ll get my good shoes.
But first, tell me:
Did the accident redistribute their wealth to the masses?
Did those deaths take out a harmful corporation in a way that makes life markedly better for those it was harming?
Did it enact any kind of helpful policy, regulatory, or socioeconomic change?
Or:
Are they just going to replace that CEO?
Is that wealth just going to get passed to their next of kin, remaining withheld from the masses who both need and deserve it?
Is this whole thing going to be forgotten by the next news cycle?
Is our collective glee just ‘bread and circuses’ type behavior that gloats over useless and frankly stupid deaths without any actual impact being made?
“People are justified in their lack of pro-social response to this event because of the socioeconomic state of the world.”
Okay, so show me where any of this changes the socioeconomic structure of the world. Show me where there’s anything worthy of “I hope they all die a slow, agonizing death for,” [checks notes], “hubris, a typical characteristic in most humans at some point in their lives.”
Was it all incredibly stupid? Absolutely. Did most of the dead have it coming? Absolutely. The tragedy in it is that there were no regulations in place to say “Uh…no?” when that voyage was in its planning stages.
And the worst part is? Nothing. Changes. So far, these are meaningless deaths.
Imagine we’re in ancient Rome. The CEO of Oceangate has convinced a group of his buddies (and the kid they dragged along) that “Hey, y’know what would be really fun? If we all dressed up as gladiators and paid to tussle with the lion. No, no, yeah there’s a chance you could die, but trust me, it’s gonna be so cool.” And then we all fucking ate it up, half of us cheering on the lion while the other half wept for those poor, poor rich people (yeah I know, I’m rolling my eyes too)…all under the watchful eye of our royal highnesses who put on the show: The Corporate System and The News Cycle, who both stood to profit whether the group of idiots lived or died.
Did the rich folks have it coming? Absolutely. Is it still horrific that it was allowed to happen at all? Yes.
This is why they don’t broadcast the other tragedies. It’s not good for them as a partnership. Those gut wrenching tragedies, the ones with true injustice? They don’t placate us, they upset us and turn us against those in power.
But dumb rich folks dying? On my TV? Oh goody, my fave show is on. Let’s see if it’s started another useless internet war, creating low-level enemies for us inside our screens so we forget about the real enemies for a while longer.
Not only that, but killing a CEO won’t change anything. That’s a replaceable employee, and the corporation as a unit cares about that person about as much as it cares about the rest of us (which is to say: not at all). That CEO’s wealth will just be given out to their relatives, and the money will stay contained within that family unit. The CEO will be forgotten in the next news cycle, when their death is no longer profitable for the news industry and the internet has moved onto its next useless spiral.
Guillotines in France worked because they dismantled the government, which also happened to consist of all the rich folks, to enact socioeconomic change. Thus: people celebrated the deaths of the rich, and rightfully so.
That’s not what this is. This isn’t “eating the rich”. This just the joy of entertainment, a good show.
Nothing ever changes. We stay entertained, temporarily placated by the deaths of a couple rich people.
Bread and fucking circuses.
On the one hand, I hope this event puts mortal fear back into the wealthy. I hope it's reminded them that money can't always save their stupid asses. I hope they have learned to fear death again.
On the other, I hope they don't, and keep taking out more billionaires through their own hubris in increasingly absurd and ironic ways.
Minor note: the video game controller thing is a bit misleading. Using hardware that has been road tested to death, patched, and refined over years is not in and of itself a bad engineering choice. The Navy uses off the shelf controllers all the time, because theyre more reliable than one-off controll schemes that haven't had that same level of refinement.
No, the bad part was the specific controller they used. It was wireless, for one thing. But the controller thing was not what went wrong, and is not, on its own, a bad design decision.
It's just funny.
i learned that Gabe Newell, president of the video game company Valve which created steam, owns Inkfish, an ocean-exploration research organisation which currently holds the records for the deepest crewed dives in all five oceans with their deep-submergence vehicle Limiting Factor (x)
y’all need to go see the titanic jokes they were making back THEN.
it’s the precursor to “they’re writing fanfics” oh my god
