Even for those who have had the chance to go out in time, or to live outside the evacuation zones, there was no escape from the fires in the Los Angeles region this week.
There is little point of view in the city from which the flames or plules of smoke are not visible, nowhere the smell of burning memories cannot reach.
And on our screens – on all the channels and the social media text thread and the WhatsApp group – an endless Image carousel documents a level of fear, loss and sorrow which seemed unimaginable here as recently as Tuesday morning.
Even in places of physical security, many in Los Angeles have trouble diverting the worst from online destruction.
“For me, it is more comfortable to make a cross than to sit and wait,” said Clara Sterling, who evacuated his home on Wednesday. “I prefer to know exactly where the fire goes and where he is heading rather than knowing nothing at all.”
Writer and actor, Sterling is – by his own admission – extremely online. But the nature of this week's fires makes it particularly difficult to disengage media coverage and social media, experts said.
On the one hand, there is an important difference between making images of a distant crisis scrolling and of remaining informed of an active disaster that takes place in your neighborhood, said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor specializing in technological ethics at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It's weird to consider it” doomscrolling, “she said. “When you are there, you are also looking for important information that can be very difficult to obtain.”
When you share an identity with the victims of a traumatic event, You are more likely Both to search for the media coverage of the experience and feel more in distress by the media you see, says Roxane Cohen SilverDistinguished professor of psychological sciences at UC Irvine.
For residents of Los Angeles, this week's fires affect the people with whom we most intimately identify: family, friends and community members. They have Places consumed And benchmark This appears in good place in good memories and regular routines.
Omnipresent images have also fueled painful memories for those who have experienced similar disasters – a group whose number has increased as forest fires have become more frequent in California, said Silver.
She knows him personally: she evacuated fires from Laguna beach in 1993 and began a long -term study of the survivors of this fire a few days after her home.
“Throughout California, throughout the West, in communities that have experienced powder trail, we are particularly initiated and aware of this news,” she said. “And the more we immerse ourselves in this news, the more likely we are to feel distress.”
Absorption in these images of fire and ash can cause trauma, said Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego who studied long -term psychological health of the survivors of the 2018 Camp Fire.
The team has identified persistent symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety among the survivors who have personally experienced Fire trauma as an injury or a loss of goods, and – to a smaller but even significant extent – among those who have indirectly known trauma as witnesses.
“If you are a witness (trauma) in the media, in the streets you have lived on and you have worked, and you can really put yourself in this place, then it can certainly have an impact,” said Mishra, who is also co -director of the UC Climate Change and Health Council. “Research in psychology and neuroscience has shown that images and videos that generate a feeling of personal meaning can have deep emotional impacts.”
The emotional attraction of videos and images on social networks makes it difficult to diversify the look, even as many find the information there more difficult to make.
Like many others, Sterling spent a lot of time online during the first days of the COVVI-19 pandemic. At the time, Sterling said, the social media environment was decidedly different.
“This time, I think I feel less informed of what's going on, because there has been such a great push so as not to check the facts and get rid of verified accounts,” she said.
The rise in images and photos generated by AI added another disturbing fold, as Sterling stressed a video Posted on Tiktok early Thursday.
“The Hollywood panel was not on fire last night. Any video or photos you saw of the Hollywood panel on fire was false. They were generated by AI,” she said, publishing a hotel in San Diego after evacuating.
Hunter ditchA producer and voice actor from Lake Balboa has raised similar concerns concerning the lack of precise information. Certain content from the social media she encountered seemed “very polarizing” or political, and some have exaggerated the scope of the disaster or full manufacturing, such as this inflamed Hollywood panel.
The distribution of false information added another layer of stress, she said. This week, she began to turn to other types of applications – such as the disaster mapping application, Watch Duty – to follow the propagation fires and the evolution of evacuation zones.
But that made him wonder: “If I have to check a completely different application for specific information, when I even do on social networks?”
