Olakunle Olafioye and Henry Okonkwo
In great numbers, Nigerians, who have smartphones with camera and video recording features, are falling into the error of Kevin Carter, who won the globally respected and treasured Pulitzer Prize in photography with a picture titled “The Vulture and The Little Girl,” but ended up incurring the wrath and condemnation of millions of people across the world.
In 1993 Carter flew into Sudan to photograph the famine that ravaged the country. Exhausted after a day of taking pictures in the village of Ayod, he headed for an open bush. There he heard whimpering noise and came across an emaciated toddler who had collapsed on the way to a feeding centre. As he took the child’s picture, a plump vulture landed nearby. Carter had reportedly been advised not to touch the victims because of disease, so instead of helping, he spent 20 minutes waiting in the hope that the stalking bird would fly away. It did not. Carter scared the creature away and watched as the child continued toward the centre. He then lit a cigarette, talked to God and wept. Scathing criticisms subsequently trailed Carter for not coming to the toddler’s rescue as the world curiously sought to know what fate befell his subject later.
Although reports claimed the little girl eventually reached the feeding centre and later died from malarial fever 14 years after, the darkness of that bright day never lifted from Carter. In July 1994, he took his own life and left a suicide note, which read, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain.”
The lesson in Carter’s experience has been lost on millions of Nigerians with the advent of high-tech mobile phones. Perhaps, more than its primary purposes of making and receiving calls, mobile phones now come in handy for video recording and taking of pictures.
Today, the social media is awash with videos and pictures of events which otherwise would have passed unnoticed to the generality of the people. These images range from the least offensive to the most gory and dehumanizing.
A recent viral video involving a woman who was assaulted and stripped naked on allegation of adultery in Anambra State once again brought to the fore the need for introspection as the obsession for mobile phone video recording and photography assumes a rather inhuman dimension.
Videos and pictures of people writhing in pain at scenes of accidents while passers-by were busy recording the gory moments with their phones rather than helping the victims, are not uncommon. Recently, Nigerians were outraged by series of videos, which emerged from the scene of a collapsed building at Ita-Faaji, Lagos, where several people, including school pupils, died. Not a few Nigerians expressed their disappointments and frustrations with the gusto a few individuals beamed their phones to capture the horrifying moments when the victims of the disaster were pulled out of the rubble.
Curiously, there is no consensus on the motive behind the decisions to video-record such appalling images, especially when the victims are in desperate need of help.
Samuel Agbaje, an undergraduate, said he derives a great deal of fun from capturing “spectacular scenes” on his phone because of the satisfaction he gets from information sharing. “It is just part of me. I derive so much fun when I film strange happenings and share on social media platforms because a lot of people will get to see it and react to it. Sometimes some of these spectacular scenes turn out to be Internet sensations,” he said.
Asked how he felt while recording scenes where the victims needed help, Agbaje said: “I am very sensitive when doing my recordings. I place so much value on lives, not only human lives; even animal lives are also precious to me. I don’t record anything of such because I don’t even move closer to such scenario because I can’t behold the sights that will make me shudder. “
On her part, Miss Ruth Maurice says her decision to record events with her phone often comes spontaneously. “I don’t go out with the intention of filming whatever comes my way. But whenever I run into what I consider interesting and I know will interest other people, I bring out my phone to record it. There are those who post them on their social media accounts with the aim of attracting traffic.”
Asked if she ever recorded any scene where the subject of her recording needed her help and how she reacted afterwards, Maurice said: “The only time that happened, I was not in position to singlehandedly rescue the person so I called on other people around and they came to the man’s rescue. I didn’t know the man was drunk. From where I was standing, I just saw him tumble into the drainage and I raised the alarm for help. I later captured the moment he was rescued on phone. I didn’t have any negative feelings about filming the scene because I believe I did the best anybody with human feelings would have done in such circumstance,” she said.
For Mr Rilwan Subair, a computer engineer, there is nothing wrong in filming people in distress with one’s phone except you are in position to help and rescue the person. I once did that and some people criticized me for it, but the fact is that there was nothing I could do to help the victims. The truth is that it takes a lot of courage to attempt it.
“Filming tragic occurrence is not a recent development because the media sometimes report such occurrences with graphic details. But what we are now witnessing with people using their phones is just that modern technology has liberalized it and anyone can just take his phone and snap anything now, “ Subair said.
Reacting to this development, some social psychologists and professional physiotherapists in a chat with Sunday Sun described this trend as ‘worrisome’ and ‘saddening’. According to them, the craze to record video of an ensuing tragic scene is a clear indication of how the digital age is affecting and eroding humanity and value system.
According to Mrs. Salem Ogunlowo, a professional physiotherapist, at the Therapy By Salem (Empathic Support), Lagos, this growing buzz is a malady that must be taken seriously. “It is a very bad habit, I must say. And it is something we really must educate the youths about. It is a negative phenomenon that is festering because we want to copy the western lifestyle. But we’re not sensitive enough to balance these western influences to avoid the practice eroding our own value system.”
Mrs Ogunlowo noted that this practice is a ticking time bomb that might detonate because of increased access and usage of smartphones among youths. “Recording video of tragedies instead of helping, or even taking selfies in dangerous situations are social attitudes among youths that have triggered global concern. Sadly, nobody seems to be talking about it here in Nigeria; and that is where the media come in to help create the needed awareness about this negative trend,” she said.
Similarly, Mr Samuel Udeze, a social psychologist, said the coming of the digital age is one factor that has sparked this attitude. He said the advancement in digital technology has blurred the line between conventional journalism and citizen-journalism. Hence individuals place themselves in a mental quest to witness and record videos of tragic incidents.
“Nowadays, everyone practically wants to be a media maker, and be posting disturbing videos to their Facebook and Instagram accounts to score cheap points or to trigger comments. They take these videos and want to be seen as the first to break the news on social media. That is the satisfaction they seek. Many of them further aim to make money by selling the videos or pictures of the tragedy to bloggers and online news sites.”
Dr Jonah Nwankwo, a clinical psychologist at Springs Hospital, Lagos, disclosed that the psyche behind the attitude where people witness an emergency and rather than intervene to help is called the ‘Bystander effect’. “This attitude has been documented for decades. But a modern form of this phenomenon where bystanders bring out their smart phones to record tragedies or fights has been evidenced all over the country,” he said.
Nwankwo said: “Sometimes in most of the videos, you’ll see the person recording the video staying away from the conflict, they can be heard commenting and even laughing at the ensuing fisticuffs or tragedy. People often don’t get involved in these brawls and tragic situations, because of the fear of being hurt themselves. And this mindset of keeping out harm’s way is a notion that correlates with the long-studied Bystander Effect.
“People prefer to stand aside and video record disturbing scenes with their smart phones because we’re now in a time where everyone has immediate access to phones and social media sites. So, there can be a feeling of reward associated with filming a potentially dangerous situation. So, this keeps people from intervening. It can show up on the news blogs or get thousands or even million hits on YouTube.
“But to me, I’ll advise that if you have time to pull out a camera and film people fighting, or someone being beaten, you should think that if you can do that, you can divert that energy to help the person or alert the police or relevant authorities near you.”