Introduction

The growth of the mass media in the last forty years has been multifaceted. It included the introduction and expansion of the internet, cell phones and various movie and entertainment options. It also included the expansion of both the number and the size of televisions. There are now not only televisions in several rooms of many homes, but there are also televisions in airports, train depots, barbershops, department stores, gyms, planes and dentists’ offices. Waiting rooms everywhere have televisions. Some gas stations offer television screens at their gas pumps so customers can watch TV as their gas is pumped. We can even “watch” television on our cell phone, Blackberry or in our car (if you dare). The television screen has become omnipresent and instantly accessible in American society.

Media growth has led to another significant impact on American society—communication that is not only omnipresent but also virtually instantaneous. The rapidity of communication is in great part due to the internet, email and cell phones, all of which transmit information and images around the world in seconds. This technology has led people in the United States and most western nations to live with a sense of urgency, the almost constant “breaking news” relating both grand and tragic developments “as they happen” around the nation, with visual images provided by “cameras in the sky,” not to mention the use of cell phones and video cameras that share images instantly on the internet’s UTube and other image sharing sites.

Recently in a nearby city, a young man was beat up and eventually shot by two transit police officers. The circumstances of his clash with officers and his eventual death were unclear, but clearly the victim was unarmed and of a racial background different than those of the police officers. Nearby friends caught the aftermath of the incident on their cell phone cameras. Others called friends on their car phones. Soon images—even streaming video—was available on UTube. Flashing news, graphic photos filled with blood and death were instantly being transmitted around the city. News reporters fanned the flames by interrupting the “regularly scheduled programs” with “breaking news.” Within the hour, people were gathering at the site of the tragic incident, watching and waiting. Others brought flowers and soon a makeshift memorial of flowers was being created on the sidewalk next to the transit stop. In time more people gathered and more flowers appeared. By the third hour the crowd was numbering over 1,000 people, and its mood was turning from grief to anger. Fueled by long standing injustices, portions of the crowd turned violent, destroying windows, over turning police cars, throwing rocks and bottles. In time the violence was controlled. Yet, the memorial of flowers continued for days and in time a permanent memorial was created for the victims of this tragedy. This incident like many similar incidents around our nation represents the best and the worst of the impact of the media upon how we grieve and respond to collective tragedies.

Graphic images sharpen the emotional impact of both the grand and the tragic, often far beyond the capacity of words alone. Photo journalism has always worked on the premise that the right image will tell “a thousand words.” Who can forget the powerful images of a rescue worker carrying a limp body of a child out of a burning building or of airplanes crashing into buildings, people crying in front of makeshift memorials, body remains and caskets, surviving children alone and forlorn? These images are indelible in our memories. When it comes to grief, especially vicarious grieving, we are visual creatures.

The roots of vicarious grieving

In one of his long neglected works, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Darwin (1872) suggested that some human emotions are innate, universal and have “survival value.” He identified one such emotion with “survival value” as grief—the human impulse to cry, sob and weep. Grieving provides a psychological release that enables the mourner to vent his or her pain and begin the process of reclaiming the emotional energy that once was attached to that which is now gone. Certainly this dynamic alone would be of an evolutionary advantage for early humans, yet Darwin suggested that the expression of weeping also served a social need, signaling to the mourner’s next of kin that he or she needed help, was in pain, alone and/or frightened. Many scholars have linked grief’s origins back to its earliest expression in an infant’s cry, which signals to others to rally around and meet the child’s needs. Recent studies of the emotions of infants, as displayed in their facial expressions, affirm that sorrow is one of the seven universal, innate facial expressions that each of us inherits (NOVA 1986). Like the survival value of adult grief, the evolutionary advantage of the infant’s innate instinct to cry is the production of aid by others. We know from systems theory that communication is always a two-way street. Just as the mourner is programmed to cry, so too adults are programmed to respond to another’s tears with sympathy and support. In short, empathy is built into humanity’s emotional make-up. Parents of newborns are especially familiar with the pull on the heartstrings that comes with hearing their child cry. Most of us, unless we are sociopaths, are touched by the tears and sufferings of other humans and even other living creatures. We are instinctually drawn to their aid.

All this leads to the suggestion that vicarious grieving is built into the human psyche. It comes out of our capacity to be empathetic, to care for one another. It was as essential to our survival in more primitive times as was our innate aggressive and competitive traits. Empathy may still be essential to our survival. This realization gives new depth to the meaning of St. Paul’s imperative to the early Christian community to, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15).

Grief is thus as infectious an emotion as joy or laughter. Indeed, just as a big belly laugh triggers the laughter of others, so, too, the heartfelt tears of another make us cry. There is something gloriously human (and perhaps Divine) about empathetic tears. So innate is this capacity to empathize, that many of us willingly attend movies or read stories that we know will have the emotional impact of making us cry.

That grief is meant to be shared seems a logical conclusion. There is some way in which sorrow and community are fundamentally linked so that in times of sorrow we instinctually want to gather together. Even the ancients knew that grief is vicariously experienced. In antiquity, funerals were customarily facilitated by paid mourners who were given the job of expressing intense grief in order to get the tears flowing for the public mourning. Tears thus beget tears.

What are we crying about?

When we cry in a sad movie or in sympathy at a funeral, what is the basis for our tears? Is it pure vicarious grieving or are we accessing or being reminded of our own unresolved losses? Nationally known thanatologist, Therese A. Rando (1997) defined “vicarious bereavement” as “the experience of loss and consequent grief and mourning that occurs following the deaths of others not personally known by the mourner” (p. 259). Dr. Rando posited that there are two types of vicarious bereavement, with the first or Type I being purely vicarious—empathy with and for another’s sorrow. Thus, sympathetic tears at a funeral may express sorrow solely for the current loss by another.

However, Dr. Rando’s second or Type II vicarious bereavement referred to the experience wherein one feels vicarious grief for a mourner and the very sharing of another’s sorrow serves as a reminder of our own losses and thus re-activates our own unfinished grieving. In Type II, we are both grieving for a friend/family member and for ourselves as well, in ways that are sometimes distinguishable and sometimes indistinguishable.

Dr. Rando has suggested what most of us instinctually know—that in sharing another’s grief, we do some of our own grief work as well. We are reminded of a loss similar to the one the mourner is experiencing, though the reminder may not be a conscious reminder. Even if we have not acknowledged our losses or grief in years, vicarious mourning may lead to weeping afresh as though our long-ago loss just happened.

Most clergypersons have had the experience of a congregant unconnected to the deceased emotionally collapsing in or after a funeral service. In conversations with the individual, it becomes clear that the present loss reminds or reactivates in the parishioner a prior, still unresolved sorrow. So too, many therapists have had clients who have come to them with a delayed grief reaction, triggered by a touching story or a distant reminder.

In fact, therapists are keenly aware of how many unresolved losses people consciously or unconsciously carry around with them. It is my personal contention that 90 percent of the time, when a new patient enters therapy, he or she is there because something has died, is about to die or needs to die. Unresolved grief is far more universal and pervasive than we recognize. So it is common then, when we witness and share in the sorrow of another, our own unfinished grief is easily triggered.

Degrees of separation

What are the factors or variables that determine if we grieve vicariously? The probability and intensity of vicarious grieving is first related to what we might call “degrees of separation”—how near or distant in space and time one is from the actual mourner. The degree of separation does not, however, refer to just physical distance, but psychological and social distance as well. Do we identify with the victim in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, family situation, age and circumstances? The greater the identification, the greater the probability that vicarious grief will be triggered and the greater the intensity will that vicarious grief be when it does occur. We empathize easily with whom we identify most.

Other scholars have suggested that the dynamic of vicarious grieving is more operative among certain individuals, that is, there are temperamental differences among people that make some people more empathetic or sensitive than others. It follows then that the more one possesses natural empathy, the more one is prone to vicarious grieving. Women in this culture tend to be more emotionally sensitive and more naturally empathetic than men. This tendency is often grounded in an instinctive and/or developed capacity to respond to the needs of an infant, a capacity that is known to facilitate formation of the infant-parent bond vital for the healthy development of children. Yet, everyone, to the extent then that she or he has a capacity for empathy, is open to the experience of vicarious grieving.

In Dr. Rando’s (1997) essay, it is suggested that vicarious grieving increases when and if children are involved. Dr. Rando compared the public’s response to the first attack on the World Trade Center, when no children were victimized, and the Oklahoma City Bombing, which involved the deaths of 19 children in the preschool housed in the decimated Federal Building. Media images of dead or suffering children, grieving parents and heartfelt memorials filled with teddy bears and toys are powerful triggers for vicarious grief. Most parents, even those removed by many miles and years from the victims, can identify with these mourning parents. Vicarious grief is intensified in part by the anxiety experienced by parents everywhere around the possibility that such a random tragedy could happen to one of their own children. In a sense then, imagination is a key variable in vicarious grieving. We grieve vicariously in part because we can imagine what it would be like to lose a child in such a manner.

Another variable is the presence of unfinished or similar losses in the caregiver. If a caregiver or even mere observer of a tragic loss has unresolved losses in his or her life, he or she is more vulnerable to vicarious tears. Thus, incidents of loss in the caregiver’s life, and his or her pattern of successfully or not-so-successfully resolving those losses, are important variables. Some would argue, however, that every loss, particularly a loss that is of major importance in one’s life, is never fully nor completely resolved and that we all live with a residue of feelings about prior losses. Most of us, if placed in a situation where another is suffering a loss similar to one in our own past, will, in fact, become more aware of our own internal grief. The degree of similarity between the actual mourner’s loss and the hidden losses within us will increase the likelihood and intensity of the vicarious grief. The similarity may be related to the type of death, the age of the victim or the circumstances, such as the unpredictability of the death. Alternatively, the similarity between the present and past loss may be not so much about the particulars of the loss, but rather the emotions the loss evokes—the anger, the outrage or the helplessness. In short, the presence and similarity of unresolved losses within us heightens our identification with the actual mourner, and thus increases the likelihood of vicarious grieving.

Media’s role in vicarious grief

The modern mass media, particularly the televised media, serves as a catalyst of vicarious grieving. The media helps us grieve by inviting viewers to participate vicariously in events surrounding a collective loss or tragedy. Viewers virtually around the globe can participate in a mourning ritual, whereas in a pre-modern era, the death would not even have been known, much less acknowledged in rites, in most places around the world. In times of collective sorrow, we now mourn together—not physically, but electronically—in living rooms, offices and airports around the world.

In recent years, the 1997 death of Princess Diana comes to mind as one of the most significant outpouring of collective sorrow and vicarious grieving, made possible by the media. Millions of people, most of whom never knew Diana or met her, mourned together...many of them in isolation. The mourning of Diana was a media event in the best sense of the word. The media gave people far and wide, people from all walks of life, an opportunity to come together in one common purpose, to share in the tragic loss of a remarkable woman.

As a result, there were three distinct sets of mourners—the immediate friends and family, those in attendance at the rite and those participating vicariously by watching it on televisions at home or in offices. Each group grieved, and yet, each type or style of grieving was different. Sometimes the media was caught in a conflict of interest between these two or three sets of mourners and their respective needs.

What was particularly revealing in this event was the power of the media to shape as well as reflect how people grieve. For example, when the Royal family did not respond with the expressions of grief that the public expected, there was pressure in and through the media for the Royals to change their ways. The media helped shape or became the channel through which mourning customs and norms were shaped.

Clearly, in a media age, we now expect our presidents, kings and prime ministers to be grief leaders too, to accurately and effectively verbalize the feelings of a nation. In the midst of sorrow, especially collective sorrows, we often look for an emerging grief leader, who can speak on behalf of us all, speak to and about the feelings, the pain and the meaning of the unfolding events.

It should be noted that the influence of the media on grief and bereavement is also more long term and indirect than we might imagine. The growth of the media in the last hundred years has increased our sense of world community, our interconnectedness as a people. Attachment theory argues that grief is made possible by attachment (Parkes 2006). The more we are emotionally attached to that which is lost, the more intense our grief.

Further, the character of that attachment is reflected in the grief. The media and its byproduct of a greater sense of belongingness, has increased our attachment, our emotional investment in the world beyond our doorstep. Before the advent of worldwide media coverage with broad accessibility, few in America would have grieved intensely over the death of a princess in England. Now when a tragedy strikes in New York City, people around the world feel emotionally connected. All of this vicarious grief happens in part because we have become emotionally attached. Long before any given tragedy occurs, the media has increased our emotional attachment to places, people and events in the larger world, creating a greater sense of community and thus setting the stage for a greater incidence of, and occasion for, vicarious grieving.

In times of tragedy and trauma, the media’s most vital immediate role is in its dissemination of factual information about the parameters of the tragedy. Accurate information denies us denial and often thrusts us into the painful realities associated with the initial stages of grief work. Moreover, through its analysis of the tragedy, the media also offers the first interpretations of the meaning of the loss. “Individual stories of death, escape, bravery and good fortune all become part of the narrative of the event,” writes Ellen S. Zinner and Mary Beth Williams (1999). They continue:

A community tragedy is less about buildings falling than it is about the people of the community. How the people tell the story of the event colors recovery, and communal events today are more widely shared via the media, shaping and reshaping a shared perspective. (pp. 249–250)

Every loss, particularly tragic and horrific losses, carries a disruption of the assumptive world. A part of the grieving process, the process of bringing closure to this pain, includes a process of making meaning out of the tragedy. The media increasingly plays the role of a maker of meaning or an attributor of various diverse meanings.

When does media coverage cease to be the means of disseminating factual information from which we make meaning and when does it subtly start to influence the formation of that meaning? For example, what did the events of 9/11 and its aftermath mean? Were we at war, tracking down criminals, exacting revenge or being punished by God? Each of these different meanings were reported by media and these meanings differed depending on which news reporter was reporting, from which news channel and from which nation the broadcast emitted. Like it or not, the media is increasingly playing a role traditionally reserved for theologians, politicians and historians.

Humans do have this powerful innate desire to empathize and share in the sorrow of others. As noted, it is natural and universal, although the trait certainly varies in intensity from person to person. In this sense, the media provides us with what we want and perhaps need. We long to share in the sorrow of others, in part because of our natural empathy, in part because of our need to connect in an otherwise lonely world, and in part because it helps us do our own grief work.

Trauma and vicarious traumatization

Bereavement and trauma are interwoven and interrelated. All trauma includes some element of loss and grief, but not all bereavements are traumatic. Trauma introduces another emotional element or highlights one emotional element among the many associated with bereavement. That emotional element is anxiety or fear. Trauma or traumatic bereavement frightens us, frightens us beyond reason, often suddenly and irrationally so. Such fear over-rides the sorrow, at least in the initial stages of bereavement.

Interest in trauma studies and trauma theory has increased significantly in recent years. The related psychological disorder—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—has become popularized and is probably more commonplace than professionals previously realized. We now know that trauma can also be experienced vicariously. Rescue workers and therapists who work closely with the survivors and victims of tragedies often experience the symptoms and signs of trauma themselves.

Vicarious traumatization has some similar dynamics to vicarious grieving. The common mechanism is empathy—our capacity to absorb the pain, feelings and even fear of another person. We know from the studies of empathy in the context of traumatization that empathy is not always a good thing (Rothschild 2006). Sometimes empathy can be so strong, or the horror of the trauma can be so great, that the caregiver is emotionally overwhelmed. Over time, the result is compassion fatigue or emotional burnout. We also know from some of these studies of therapeutic relationships, that empathy may also be unconscious as well as conscious. That is, sometimes the body of a caregiver will absorb stress automatically, and subsequently, the caregiver will unconsciously exhibit trauma-like symptoms in sympathy with the victim for whom he or she is caring.

Most observers of the media believe that there is a growing amount and intensity of trauma displayed on television and in movies. This is true both in “real” news programs and in the fictional drama programming. The recent wave of crime scene investigation programs on American television seems to be one example of this fascination with the graphic details of death and dying.

Clearly, the result of this trend is that the media has become a catalyst for vicarious trauma as well as vicarious grieving. The mere viewing of horrific, sudden and violent events can create trauma or trauma-like symptoms in the viewing public. As with vicarious grieving, some people who experience vicarious traumatization might be responding on the basis of empathy alone, but many others are being “re-traumatized.” The current televised program or trauma event triggers the viewer’s memories of their own prior, unresolved personal trauma.

This realization of the role of the media in creating vicarious trauma or re-traumatizing viewers raises some serious concerns. Many viewers are isolated and/or do not realize that they are experiencing trauma symptoms. Trauma-like grief is best healed when it is shared—it cries out for support and comfort. Yet in this electronic age, more and more viewers are viewing televised trauma alone, isolated from networks of support. This trend should add to our sense of urgency about the need for grief groups in congregations, hospitals and community agencies. Grief and trauma work needs to occur in community, not in isolation.

Vicarious struggles with meaning

All loss, especially all trauma, involves a crisis of meaning. This dimension has been described as disruptions in the mourner’s assumptive world. “Assumptive world” or worldview refers to all of the conscious and unconscious assumptions that we take for granted about ourselves, life and the world (Parkes 2006). Our assumptive world is constructed over time and serves as our cognitive map to reality. Even in the most “ordinary” grieving, there is some re-examining of one’s assumptions or cognitive maps.

Disruptions in one’s assumptive world occur most often and most dramatically in loss situations that are unexpected, traumatic and horrific. In the context of such traumatic losses, mourners’ assumptions may be “shattered” (Janoff-Bulman 1992). Questions such as, “Why did this happen? Why did she die or did I live? What is the meaning of this event for my life? Did I do something wrong to cause/contribute to this tragedy? Can life be trusted? Is life good? Where was God in the midst of this tragedy?” become urgent. All traumatic losses carry this crisis of meaning or, if you will, a crisis of faith. Unless this element of the grief process is worked through satisfactorily, the healing is not complete.

In the essay noted above, Dr. Rando (1997) suggested that there was another type of vicarious bereavement that involved this dimension of the grief process. She suggested that some people so identify with the actual mourner that they experience violations of their assumptive world in response to, and in sympathy with, the mourner. The witnessing of events that are senseless, random, horrific, and especially involving innocent children, can shatter theological and psychological assumptions about the nature of life, justice and one’s own being. Vicarious bereavement under these circumstances resonates within us as a “crisis of faith,” causing us to rethink and then doubt or reaffirm, our theological assumptions. In the realm of philosophical or psychological literature, this would be called an existential crisis. There is an existential crisis in most losses, and especially in traumatic losses.

Members of the clergy and other pastoral caregivers are uniquely equipped to minister to the bereaved, not only in terms of their emotions and social bonds, but especially in terms of these violations of one’s assumptive theology. Helping others to identify and talk about their unresolved meaning issues can only help the overall grief process move forward. Clergy and congregations ought to be at the forefront of grief ministries.

Implications of long-term trends

As the media provides an ever-increasing degree of trauma, thus giving rise to far more occasions of vicarious grieving and traumatization, another concern—almost at the opposite end of the spectrum—has risen. Is our exposure to trauma, death and loss too much? Does the media’s over-exposure of death, violence and tragedy desensitize us to the real dramas and needs that surround us, sometimes in our immediate neighborhoods?

Some scholars have noted that there has been a gradual shift in the content of the media in recent years that could be summarized as more incidents of unnatural deaths than ever before, while at the same time offering fewer and fewer opportunities to witness natural deaths. Unnatural deaths, such as murders, are not only routinely featured on the 11 o’clock news, they have also become the commonplace focus of many fictional television series and full-length movies. We are not only seeing more unnatural death on a daily basis, but we are also seeing much more graphic images of death, including dead and mutilated bodies and violent attacks upon victims.

At the same time, most Americans see less natural death than ever before. As medical science advances in the United States, the average lifespan has been extended. It has also extended the length of time individuals live with chronic disease and infirmities. The infirm elderly increasingly spend many more years at the end of their lives out of the view of their families and their communities in extended care facilities. Moreover, when the elderly infirm face life-threatening failures, the beginnings of the natural death process, the elderly are often transferred to critical care facilities—hospitals and emergency rooms—to provide in extremis care. Families often find that the medical advances of monitoring machines, intubation and pain medication make it impossible for them to witness “a natural death.”

This trend stands in contrast to the times, as recently as a century ago, when families observed and shared in the natural dying process of loved ones in the family home. The impact of this trend is most keenly felt by younger generations. It is not uncommon for young people to reach their early adult years having never attended a funeral, much less observed an actual death or a natural dying process. (At the same time, some young people in crime-ridden areas of our nation have attended too many funerals of those who have died violent deaths.) Thus, many young people literally do not know what to do, how to behave or how to recognize or manage their feelings of grief. What they do learn about grief and the rites of grief, they learn from the media’s portrayal of (violent) death. It is the media that is increasingly teaching all of us, particularly our younger generations, how to grieve and how to mourn. How do we think they are doing?

Television watchers find that, in many cases, weekly fictional television dramas remove death and dying from their natural emotional context, i.e. grief and bereavement, in the same way that such dramas may remove love as the natural emotional context for sex. Television programming focuses more on the event of death or the dying than upon the aftermath of death. I suspect that this is so because death is dramatic and newsworthy, while grief, especially long-term grief, is considered to be lacking in drama and newsworthiness.

Thus, when the media does describe grief, either in news or fictional programming, it is as a short term, intense phenomenon. Media programming does not normally allow extended coverage of a mourner’s anguish. Thus viewers are left with the impression that grieving longer than a few days is atypical if not abnormal. In spite of the increasing exposure to unnatural death on the various media outlets, we are still, as many scholars posit, a death-denying and grief-avoiding culture.

So, what is the long-term effect of this day-after-day, year-after-year witnessing of horrific, tragic and sad events, be they real or fictional, without a means or context for processing our grief? How do our psyches and our souls manage this constant barrage of grief-inducing tragedy?

Media viewing, by its very nature, is a passive activity, and yet empathy, the innate human response to tragedy, pushes us to action, to rush to the aid of another, to help. We do see occasional outpourings of donations and support from the viewing public in response to natural disasters, yet the percentage of the viewing public that actively empathizes in these cases is small. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the media’s programming may significantly contribute to a whole generation being raised on a dynamic of de-sensitization. The important moral and ethical question that should be our focus in the decades to come is, “What are the long-term effects of media de-sensitization on the American culture?”

Conclusion

In an age of increasing media coverage, the media has become a catalyst for both increased incidents of vicarious grieving and vicarious traumatization. To some extent, our capacity to be empathetic and share in another’s grief is both good for the social order and a helpful way to do our own unfinished grief work. Yet, dangers lurk as the level of traumatization displayed in the media grows in intensity, frequency and horror.

Media viewing is often done in isolation and creates a passivity that works against the natural human impulse to come to the aid of another. What will be the long-term effects of increasing levels of violence and trauma displayed in the media? Are we, as a people, becoming more callous and desensitized to the needs of others and ourselves? Our challenge is to maintain awareness of the danger of over-exposure to violence and tragedy in the media and thus regulate our media viewing while, at the same time, working to use the role and influence of the media to facilitate healing and community, especially for those who grieve.