In Israel-Gaza War, Recycled Images From Past Conflicts Can Undercut True Toll

In a video circulating online meant to convey the horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas, a small boy wails, his face caked in dust. “It’s horrifying.”Among the popular images and videos supposedly illustrating the human toll of the war: A heap of dead children swaddled in white, described as Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Mr. Slovic and his colleagues found that the image was more effective at motivating public response than the grim statistics about the hundreds of thousands who had been killed in the war. But the introduction of misinformation around such stories and visual accounts, Mr. Slovic warned, could give people reason to reject or ignore such evidence more broadly. “There are horrible things happening, and those need to be investigated.”The post In Israel-Gaza War, Recycled Images From Past Conflicts Can Undercut True Toll appeared first on New York Times.