Graphic Content, Trauma and Meaning: A Conversation with Alexa Koenig and Andrea Lampros

Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service. The ubiquity of cameras in our phones and our environment, coupled with massive social media networks that can share images and video in an instant, means we see often graphic and disturbing images with great frequency. How are people processing such material? And how is it different for people working in newsrooms, social media companies, and human rights and social justice organizations? What protections might be put in place to protect people from vicarious trauma and other harms, and what is the ultimate benefit of doing this work? In their new book, Graphic: Trauma and Meaning in Our Online Lives, University of California Berkeley scholars Alexa Koenig and Andrea Lampros set out to answer those questions, drawing from their work at the Berkeley Human Rights Center Investigations Lab. Source What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion. Alexa Koenig:  So I’m Alexa Koenig. I am co-faculty director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law, and also cofounder with Andrea Lampros of the Investigations Lab at the Human Rights Center.  Andrea Lampros: And I’m Andrea Lampros. I am the communications director at the Berkeley School of Education at UC Berkeley, and I cofounded the Investigations Lab with Alexa and have worked on the resiliency piece of the lab when I was there at the Human Rights Center. Justin Hendrix:  You are the authors of this new book, Graphic: Trauma and Meaning in Our Online…Graphic Content, Trauma and Meaning: A Conversation with Alexa Koenig and Andrea Lampros