Public Compassion under the Mediation of Suffering: Taking the Videos of "Second Uncle" on Social Media as an Example

Abstract

All along, the media has been keen on writing about suffering. This paper takes the video "Three days back to the village, my second uncle cured my mental depletion" as an example, and uses a combination of discourse analysis and content analysis. Based on explaining the video's strategy of mediating suffering in terms of narrative subject, narrative content, and narrative perspective in the perspective of nonfiction narrative, the paper explores the interaction between mediating suffering and public compassion through the analysis of the text in the comment section. It is argued that media-mediated suffering can, to a certain extent, evoke various forms of public compassion; the paradox of authenticity in non-fiction news texts constrains the generation of public compassion; "compassion fatigue" prompts the public to show emotional resistance to media suffering narratives; media suffering narratives cannot touch all the public, and in the case of "compassion avoidance", we need to be wary of the "post-truth" trap.