Perceptions of Society

In just about any given situation, many people will view it from differing perspectives. This is especially evident in events when people give eyewitness accounts of what happened. These people view the exact same thing, but they perceive it in different ways because of all the emotions that arise during the commotion of everything. A person's background or position to an event will cause him or her to perceive things differently.

One of the articles discussed the tsunami back in December 2004. One of the pictures used in many of the newspaper articles across the country was a picture of a mother crying over her dead children and in the background were pairs of children's feet covered by a white blanket. Most people that see this can assume that most, if not all, of those children are dead. People that are not from Thailand might see it as being just fine putting pictures of dead children from Thailand in the newspaper. However, people from Thailand might see that picture as being too much, just like someone from the United States might see it as being too much to be putting pictures of dead American children in newspapers here in America. It depends on where you are from on how you view many things in society, such as pictures in a newspaper.

This is situation is similar to the one with the picture of the fireman holding the small infant in his arms after the bombing in Oklahoma. Many people called in and thought it was unacceptable showing the picture of the presumed to be dead infant on the front pages of newspapers across the country. If it was an infant from another country, they probably would not see it as being as unacceptable. This just goes to show that where a person is from and his or her background shapes how he or she will perceive society around the world.