War attention priorities

Most people care most about the wars they (1) hear about all the time, or (2) affect them personally. But (1) is most important.

Iran and Ukraine are both of those. Israel kind of too but not to the same degree nowadays. I guess if it started today, people would care less, but there's already plenty of attention built up that doesn't simply dissipate.

But the ones you mentioned, I have heard of the Myanmar one I think either here or on Reddit, but never heard about the other two, and neither have I seen any news on the topic anywhere. Nor does this stuff particularly affect anyone in rich countries afaik. I assume the reason why no one is talking about them is because of exactly that. Most people probably just aren't aware of them, or how they are going. Their attention is being hogged by other conflicts, and in general people don't feel like going out of their way to inform themselves about negative news. If it doesn't come their way on its own, that's it.

The three "popular" ones you mention all involve western nations. The "unpopular" ones don't.

If you live in a western nation, you're going to hear about the first three, because the outcomes of those are going to have the most impact on you.

People focus on conflicts that in their mind are easily divided into good guys and bad guys so that they get to pick a side to root for. When it's people killing each other that look and think alike it's much harder to make up one's mind about what to think about it. Much of the discussion isn't even about the conflict itself anyway but rather just people taking the opportunity to announce allegiance to a particular group or ideology.

Sadly there is indeed a tier listing of regions of the world where the wars that happen there don’t get noticed.

You can discuss any war you like in any forum that will discuss this subject.

The national media wherever you are will discuss certain conflicts and maybe strive others but the attention will really be elsewhere. As humans we have a limited attention span. Until last decade we had outsourced the sorting of importance to editors in newsrooms. With social media it's been a hybrid of editors and algorithms. A lot of algorithms are fed by traditional, trusted news organisations so the biases persist. This is very generalized but I would describe the formula like this: far away, no oil, no business interests? No news.

Also, people like having opinions. But there is also an ignorance level the majority of people will stay under. You'll always have a-holes that just parrot stuff unreflected. They live these days mostly but not exclusively on Xwitter. I'm not talking about those guys. The more level headed will not want to discuss certain things for lack of knowledge.

On Lemmy, you'll find more level headed people that are influenced by biases that persist in the Anglosphere - we speak English after all. Also, people are not willing to walk into wood chippers. There is no comment on the internet that doesn't have the potential to trigger a shit storm.

Journalism is also about narrative. Aung San Suu Kyi's journey from imprisoned freedom fighter to de facto head of government, to looking away from genocide - the hero journey was aborted and with it attention waned. Most white people don't want to look too closely at Africa for fear of finding contemporary conflicts with their roots in the era of colonisation. Since our attention is limited, those are the conflicts we gladly let go of first. Also, we need to stay focused on whether or not an octogenarian shat himself in Washington.

If I were to keep up with all the conflicts in the world, I wouldn't have time to do anything else. So I prioritize. The war russia launched against Ukraine is the closest and affects me the most, so I pay the most attention to that.

No list. It is just en vogue in a certain corner of the political spectrum, and many of the lemmy bosses and mods live in that corner.

I follow news in Poland and Spain and war in Ukraine is getting much more attention in Poland than in Spain. Why do you think is that?

There is no tier list for suffering.

I think this is a more general question to my question, what factors make a war grab public attention. I think some people helped me nail some of the aspects, configuration of ideology, beliefs, being able to determine good guys and bad guys easily, does it affect them directly (oil prices I think are affecting everyone for example), and being proximate, for example Ukraine being on the doorstep of western Europe.

But it makes me wonder, is it morally wrong not to know or care about other conflicts, as stated attention spans are limited, is it wrong when mentioning one conflict to say what about another. I think this just came out of curiosity because I feel fatigued (looks like my short attention span) regarding the three "S-tiered" conflicts on most media and social media, and wondering if other conflicts are not also worth my attention, and then I asked why there was not more news on other conflicts and then basically my question.

Sorry feels like a brain dump