Four million Syrians have been displaced, yet the United States has legally admitted less than 2,000

Credit: Bulent Kilic/Getty

Though Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, American media has only begun covering the refugee crisis that has derived from this disaster. The mayhem in Syria has left about 250,000 dead, and half of the country displaced, with 4 million Syrians fleeing as refugees. Many resettled in wretched refugee camps in neighboring countries, such as Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, and thousands have risked death in hopes of finding a better life in Europe.

It took an image of a 3-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach to prompt the world to care about the issue. Even so, the debate over whether or not Syrian refugees should be let into the United States is ongoing, and many argue the U.S. government isn't doing enough to help their plight.


Syrians are seeking refuge in other countries as a result of civil war and the rise of ISIS

Since late 1970, the Assad family has ruled Syria in a brutal dictatorship, and current leader Bashar al-Assad has been in power since 2000.

Several different ethnic and religious groups were placed under one leadership when the country was formed. The Assads, who are Shia Alawites, have treated the Sunni Arabs, the largest demographic, like second class citizens.

According to BBC, when the people were fed up and the Arab Spring protests began in 2011, Syrian security forces opened fire on peaceful protestors in the city of Deraa, killing three. Citizens took up arms to protect themselves, and by 2012 Syria was in an all out civil war. At the same time, extremist group ISIS, who also opposed Assad, began gaining momentum.

Civilians quickly became the biggest victims of violence in Syria. According to Vox, Assad targets them with barrel bombs and chemical weapons, and ISIS, when they take over towns, puts them under brutal rule. The result is millions of Syrians seeking refuge in other countries, some more willing to take them than others.

Image of dead Syrian child may have been turning point in media coverage of refugee crisis

On Wednesday September 2, publications such as The Guardian published a shocking image of a three-year-old Syrian boy after his body washed up on a Turkish beach— he was one of at least 23 Syrians who drowned that day in an attempt to reach Greece.

Image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi that shook the internet
credit: Reuters 

Thousands of Syrians are seeking refuge in Europe to escape violence and persecution, leading to a surge in tragedies—On August 27, for example, the bodies of 71 refugees were found abandoned in the back of a truck Austria, reported Al Jazeera.

But when a three-year-old boy was found washed up on a Turkish beach, journalists had to decide how this story should be covered, for the images stir such emotional responses. The general manager for National Geographic digital, Keith Jenkins, told NPR that his thoughts instantly turned to his own children.

"Taking a step back and thinking about the refugee crisis that has been unfolding for months, if not years, this felt like a moment in time that stopped everything and really said, 'This is a turning point,'" Jenkins said. "This is a point where people may pay attention in a different way."

Journalism professor at the University of Maryland says the media discussion has shifted since this image published. Now she sees more coverage of the plight of the refugees who are trying to resettle, whereas before the focus was more on how Syrians were dealing with the conflict domestically.

Questions were raised over whether or not this picture was appropriate for news organizations to publish. American news organizations tend to be especially reluctant to post violent images, and some fear an image like this has the potential to scare people away from the real meaning behind the story.

Regardless, this images was spread through social media at a speed quicker than the mainstream media outlets could catch up to. It was this image, rather than the written word of news organizations, that told the story of the Syrian refugees who died on this day.

Guha commends the news organizations that made the decision to publish this photo. "It helped a discussion on the issue," she said. "Refugees from Syria are fleeing their country for the past so many years, but there has not been much focus from the media, or global or political discussion on the matter." Guha says this particular image really helped to focus people on the issue.

Head of the media desk at the Guardian told NPR this image wasn't just emotional, but especially meaningful at a time when world leaders are clashing over how to handle the refugee crisis. "It really did put a human face on this awful humanitarian crisis. It has the power to change the nature of the debate on what is happening and what our reaction should be and how we should deal with it," Martinson said.

Guha discussed what the impacts of the photo were on her class of 30 students, and said the image prompted most of the students to sympathize with the refugees. "I think this image helped to bring the discussion in the public sphere," she said. "And it's changing peoples' opinions."

CEO of Save the Children, Justin Forsyth, told the Guardian, "This tragic image of a little boy who's lost his life fleeing Syria is shocking and is a reminder of the dangers children and families are taking in search of a better life. This child's plight should concentrate minds and force the EU to come together and agree to a plan to tackle the refugee crisis."

The United States lags behind other countries in numbers of Syrian refugees admitted 

Syria's neighboring countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq host the majority of displaced Syrians but are finding it difficult to cope with this influx of people. As a result, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called on Western countries to offer resettlement opportunities to Syrian refugees.

According to the New York Times, the United States has only admitted 1,854 Syrian refugees since 2012, 0.05 percent of all Syrian refugees worldwide.

Other countries with much smaller populations have accepted many more refugees than the United States has, and have also been making more efforts to protect them. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, said her country will now allow Syrian refugees, who would otherwise be deported back to wherever they originally entered the European Union, to stay in Germany and apply for asylum, EurActiv reported.

After the terrorist attacks in Paris that left at least 128 people dead, at least 28 American governors have publicly opposed the entry of Syrian refugees into their states. The governors statements have little effect considering they cannot legally prohibit refugees from settling within their borders, but they do have the power to make migrants' lives difficult once they arrive.

Guha thinks that the upcoming election season is making political rhetoric around the issue more complicated. Almost all governors who refuse to accept Syrian refugees are Republicans, and according to the Washington Post, presidential candidate Jeb Bush has called for Syrians to be screened by religion. "We should focus our efforts as it relates to refugees on the Christians that are being slaughtered," he said.

President Obama, however, has raised the number of Syrian refugees who will be granted legal status to at least 10,000 by 2017, and said the Paris attacks will not change his plans to do so.

During a press conference conference in Turkey, Obama said "We also have to remember that many of these refugees are the victims of terrorism themselves. That's what they're fleeing. Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values." He said it is possible to welcome refugees without threatening the security of our nation.

Guha believes more refugees should be admitted entry into the United States. "They are in desperate situations, so they need help from the countries that consider themselves world leaders," she said.

It is the United State's history of immigration and the symbols of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty that everyone should keep in mind, she says. Thousands of Syrian refugees, including hundreds of children, have died in search of a better life, but the debate over whether or not they should be admitted into the United States continues.

Despite media's coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, at least 31 American governors say Syrians not welcome in their states

The explanatory headline above explains what I have so far, but I think it will be very different once I conduct my interviews.

Syria has been in a state of war for 5 years now forcing millions out of their homes to seek safety in other countries. According to Vox, about 250,000 people have been killed and half of the country's population has been displace, with 4 million fleeing as refugees.

Though the problem is ongoing, mainstream media in the U.S. only recently began shining a spotlight on the issue. Many argue it was an image of a 3 year old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach that finally prompted the world to care about the issue. Even so, the debate over whether or not Syrian refugees should be let into the country is ongoing, and many argue the United States government isn't doing enough to help their plight.

The United States lags behind other countries in numbers of Syrian refugees admitted 

After the Paris attacks, the debate has heightened as to whether or not Syrian refugees should be let into the country. According to CNN, at least 31 U.S. governors have publicly said they will not allow Syrian refugees into their states. Many fear that the federal government cannot possibly screen out terrorists, and therefore our borders should remain closed. Other's simply think that American culture would be threatened by Muslim immigrants. I found a great New York Times article that not only talks about the fact that the U.S. is way behind in allowing Syrians into the country, but gives great statistics on the numbers that have been let in, where they currently live, and comparisons to other countries around the world. According to the article, Syrians made up about 2% of the 70,000 refugees admitted during the last fiscal year. All of these statistics can be made into great graphics about the U.S. and the refugee crisis. 

This BBC article explains the migrant crisis, in graphics, with tons of statistics and numbers that could be useful to my story. 

Image of dead Syrian child may have been turning point in media coverage of refugee crisis

Here I will show the famous image of the 3-year old Syrian boy washed up on a beach while making the trek to Europe from Syria. This is the image that comes to most peoples minds when they think of the refugee crisis. As I said before, this is an ongoing issue but it wasn't until recently that the media started to cover it. According to this article in NPR, many journalists consider the release of this photo to be a turning point in the coverage of this issue. One journalist is quoted as saying, "taking a step back and thinking about the refugee crisis that has been unfolding for months, if not years, this felt like a moment in time that stopped everything and really said, 'This is a tuning point.' This is a point where people may pay attention in a different way." This photo was spread all over social media too, bringing the realities of the crisis into the homes of most Americans. I will use this section to explore the impacts of this photo as a turning point of media coverage, as well as social media's impact on the spread of this image and other images like it. Journalists have to make decisions every day about whether or not to publish disturbing photos, but social media doesn't always have that filter. I would like to interview professional journalists about these decisions, specifically regarding Syria, and what they think are the impacts of these very expository photos on the American public.

Journalism professor at the University of Maryland, Pallavi Guha, thinks news organizations did the right thing in publishing the photo of the dead Syrian child washed up on a beach in Turkey. "It helped a discussion on the issue," she said. "Refugees from Syria are fleeing their country for the past so many years but there has not been much focus from the media or global  or political discussion on the matter." Guha says this particular image really helped to focus people on the issue.

Some news outlets, like NPR, expose range of reactions and actions towards refugees around the world 

I want to use this section to talk about the media outlets that are doing a good job in covering the refugee crisis. This Huffington Post article examines how the media are reporting on Europe's refugee crisis. In the article, Ann Cooper, a journalist and foreign correspondent is interviewed about the issue. She says that some outlets do a great job in covering the crisis. By that, she means sometimes it may seem that the human beings at the center of the issue become anonymous numbers, but some media outlets succeed in keeping the story human. Vox is another outlet that tries to explain issues and give the background of issues to give the whole picture, and explain things like difference between migrant and refugee, for example. Sometimes, however, the big picture isn't the whole story. So, some media have made it their missions to tell the smaller stories that have impact. For example, a former Hungarian leader has been hosting Syrian refugees at his house for meals, and a small Muslim community in Hungary has been making efforts to help the refugees as well. Official reactions and actions towards refugees doesn't necessarily reflect personal reactions and actions towards refugees in that same country. It is important for the media the expose all of it. 

The Washington Post had their journalists personally reflect on the issue. I would like to interview journalists on how they feel about this. Journalists are supposed to be objective, but they are human and the emotions must be overwhelming. I'd like to explore how journalists can detach themselves from a story like this, or if they think they should at all. I personally think journalism, and just story telling in general has the power to elicit change. I want to explore if the stories that are being told every day are having that impact. Are the people who are seeing these stories more likely to be open to allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S.? What impact is the media coverage having on public opinion? 

Congruent with the Third Party Effect, People Believe Others are More Influenced by the Negative Effects of Facebook Than Themselves

Learners Understand Multimedia Explanations Best When They Can Control The Pace of The Narrated Animation, Study Finds

In a 2001 study, researchers Richard E. Mayer and Paul Chandler found that learners with control over the animation and narration of a multimedia explanation foster deeper understanding than learners with no control. Their findings, which are consistent with the cognitive load theory and 2-stage theory of mental model construction, contradict conventional multimedia teaching.

The study was conducted to "determine the possible benefits of incorporating a modest amount of computer-user interactivity within a multimedia explanation." In other words, they wanted to find if users who control the pace of a multimedia explanation—narration and animation that provides a cause-and-effect account of how something works—will better understand the content than users who are presented with the information in a continuous manner without breaks. 

The researchers argue that when pictures and words are presented in a continuous manner, they become overwhelming. Therefore, learners devote much of their processing capacity to simply receiving the words and pictures and run out of capacity to mentally organize what they saw. So, based on the principles of the cognitive load theory, they predicted that when multimedia is presented part by part under the learner's control, the learner can fully grasp one segment before moving on to the next. In turn, the learner would experience less cognitive overload. Based on the 2-stage theory of mental model construction, the researchers predicted that initial user interaction with a cause-and-effect presentation would allow learners to build component models that represent how one part of the system works. Then, if they are subsequently shown a continuous presentation without interaction, they can integrate those component models into a causal model, once again reducing cognitive load.  

To test if simple user interaction with a multimedia explanation would result in deeper understanding of scientific systems, Mayer and Chandler conducted two experiments. In both, they provided all test subjects with a multimedia explanation on the formation of lightning because it is a cause-and-effect account of how something works. 

For experiment one, they split the subjects into two groups: Whole-Part (WP) and Part-Whole (PW). The Whole-Part group was shown the continuous narrated animation with no control over the sequence, followed by the same presentation separated into segments— with the option to "click here to continue"— giving them control over the pace of the sequence. The Part-Whole group was given the opposite scenario. They were first given control over the sequence, then shown the continuous narrated animation without any control.  

Conventional ways of teaching through multimedia presentations are based on the scenario given to the whole-first group. It is commonly believed that learners would build context when watching the continuous presentation, and then reinforce parts of the context when they could see each segment separately with control over when to move on to the next. However, based on the cognitive load theory, the part-first group should more deeply understand the content.

Both groups received identical information, so the researchers assumed they would perform equally well on retention tests. The results proved them right, and both groups remembered the major idea units at about the same level. What they really wanted to test, however, was the learners deep understanding of the content. To test this, they provided a transfer tests to see if learners could use the presented information in new ways beyond what was presented. The Part-Whole group had higher transfer test performance at the end of both presentations. Lastly, the researchers wanted to explore learners cognitive load ratings after each presentation. As expected, those in the Whole-Part group said cognitive load decreased significantly from the first continuous presentation to the second presentation they could control. The Part-Whole group said cognitive load increased when they were shown the second presentation they were no longer able to control. 

In the second experiment the groups were broken up into Part-Part (PP) and Whole-Whole (WW). The Part-Part group had control over the presentation they received in segments twice, and the Whole-Whole group received the continuous presentation twice. As stated above, the conventional approach to multimedia teaching is supported by the whole-first hypothesis, which aims to not disrupt the flow of information. But the researchers found that the part-first hypothesis, which is inline with the cognitive load theory, may actually be the better approach. Just as in experiment one, both groups recalled the same number of major idea units from the presentations, but the Part-Part group scored higher on the transfer test. Thus, they concluded that learning from two part presentations, with control over its speed, places less load on users' working memory than two whole presentations.

"There is more to multimedia learning than simply receiving information that is delivered by a computer," they wrote. Though the results of this study cannot account for all types of learning, it does provide us with an effective design principle for multimedia explanations when the goal is to promote understanding of how a cause-and-effect system works: provide pretraining aimed at helping learners fully master the behavior of each component before presenting a continuous explanation.

The stages of Queen Bey's reign—shown by the public via social media—in honor of her 34th birthday #BeyDay

I would share this post with my social media followers because everyone loves Beyoncé. This is an interesting article by my favorite publication, The New York Times, about Queen Bey and the different stages on her fame as told by people on social media in honor of her 34th birthday. It's also a relevant story to share on social media because it is about posts on twitter and Instagram— even Michelle Obama threw her a tweet!

Tester

This is a test post!