Appealing children: UK audiences’ responses to the use of children in humanitarian communications

Abstract

Empathy, vulnerability and identification play an important role in the wish to protect children who are perceived to be helpless, blameless and therefore the ideal victim. This article offers an empirically based discussion of responses to humanitarian communications depicting children. Although most participants recognized that a communication involving a child has immediate impact, overall they displayed a reflexive and critical awareness of their own propensity to automatically empathize in response, with many expressing irritation for being manipulated. The study suggests that focusing exclusively on a de-contextualized and dyadic ‘audience-victim’ relationship offers only partial insight into audiences’ responses and reactions. Instead, it is argued that the usefulness of the use of children in humanitarian communication can be properly gauged only in the context of media saturation, audiences being sophisticated and media-savvy about appeals and communications, and a general attitude of distrust and dissatisfaction with the marketization of NGOs.

Keywords

audience responses children humanitarian communications ideal victims NGOs

Introduction

The frequency with which children are depicted in humanitarian communication is evidence of the widespread belief that children are especially effective in grabbing audience attention (Burman, 1994, 2008; Kinsey, 1987; Moeller, 1999; Tester, 2001). Many think that this is because children make ideal victims (Moeller, 1999; O’Dell, 2008a,b) since only when victims have been identified as bona fide are they candidates for compassion (Moeller, 1999). According to Rony Brauman, former head of Médecins Sans Frontières:

[i]n the world of the famine morality play, (where) good and evil are clear cut, there is a requirement ‘for purity of victim status’ and the status of victim is only granted ‘in cases of unjustified or innocent suffering. He (sic) must be 100 per cent victim, a non-participant’. (cited in Moeller, 1999: 107)

Others believe childhood has such potency in media reporting and more generally because it represents ‘the object of all our collective good intentions’ (Frost and Stein, 1989: 3). Furthermore, childhood is seen psychologically as a state of becoming, in which the task of childhood is to develop from a state of immaturity to the (adult) state of competence and knowing. Thus childhood is constructed as a time of innocence (O’Dell, 2008a: 384), passivity and powerlessness (Burman, 2003; Kitzinger, 1990; O’Dell, 2003).

However, many have questioned the naturalness of these taken-for-granted characteristics of childhood. Some have pointed out that, far from being natural and universal, the current discourse of children as innocent, vulnerable, spontaneous, and in need of nurturance and protection is a modern and western construction (Meyer, 2007; Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers, 1992), and that the taken-for-granted view of what constitutes normal childhood obscures the geo/temporal locatedness of the child (Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers, 1992; O’Dell, 2008a). The notion that children are the concern of the adult world and in need to be saved from harm is strongly embedded in (modern) western ideology and practice (O’Dell, 2008a). Such representations of universal childhoods (O’Dell, 2008b) can serve to normalize some childhoods over others (Burman, 2005) and to position children of the South as deprived versions of children of the developed world (Suski, 2009).

This article discusses people’s responses to humanitarian communications depicting children by investigating the reasons why children make ideal victims and as such are successful fundraising tools. We start with a brief review of the relevant literature followed by a psychosocial analysis contextualizing participants’ responses to images of children. The study investigates UK audiences’ responses to humanitarian communications (see also Seu and Orgad, 2014).¹ The data discussed derive from the first phase of the project in which 182 participants took part in 20 focus groups, which represented an even spread across socio-economic, family formations and sexual orientation, and were geographically diverse across urban and rural parts of the UK. The data were thematically analysed in line with Braun and Clarks (2006). The article concludes with a discussion of the findings in relation to current debates on the use of children in humanitarian communications.

Literature review

Children function within aid ads as quintessential recipients mobilizing parental feelings. While expressing key aspects of the contemporary cultural-political organization of childhood, ‘the injunction to give to the poor and the needy maps onto the adult capacity to provide for children’ (Burman, 1996: 172).

Several authors have an optimistic view of the role of childhood as playing an important part in the development of human behaviour (Postman, 1992) and in restoring hope that fuels the humanitarian sentiment (Njabulo Ndebele quoted in Suski, 2009). Indeed, according to Suski (2009: 203), part of the reason why the suffering of children is compelling and problematic is that children are so firmly grounded in the future, and the pain surrounding the death of children is heightened by a loss of hope about the larger future of society. A psychosocial reading would highlight how the spectacle of childhood suffering can function as a transferential space onto which complex emotions are projected. Childhood, then, not only mobilizes parental feelings (Burman, 2005), but it is also a site of sentimental loss about our own lives (Pupavac, 2001). ‘When adults help children, we are in negotiation with our own childhood, and the line between self and other is blurred, as is the distinction between altruism and self-interest’ (Suski, 2009: 210).

The centrality and sanctity of the current western conceptualization of universal childhood and the claimed ‘ability of childhood to trigger a conversation of universal humanity and a commitment to action’ (Suski, 2009: 216) explain to some extent why images of children are so ubiquitous in humanitarian communication. There is plenty of evidence that most successful NGOs communications use emotive tactics (Smillie, 1994), harnessing the emotional force of presentations of children as vulnerable and in need of protection. Yet, others have pointed out that images depicting children have become so ordinary and commonplace that potential donors might have become largely ‘desensitized’ towards them (Dyck and Coldevin, 1992: 573; Tester, 2001) and are increasingly expressing compassion fatigue (Moeller, 1999).

These are sophisticated and compelling arguments, theories and textual analyses, but they provide little empirical evidence that audiences respond in the ways theorized. Clearly, the fact that NGOs continue to use images of children and that initiatives like Children in Need or Comic Relief are regular fundraising successes, suggest that children do indeed have an enduring hold on people. However, very little is known about why might this be the case and, in general, how people respond to humanitarian communication portraying suffering children.

The power and powerlessness of children: Children–viewer dynamics

Most participants of our focus groups study recognized that a communication containing a child has immediate impact and there seemed to be general agreement on why this happens, as illustrated by these statements from different focus groups in the project:

Iris: Children can’t help themselves. I mean, they have to be protected […] it’s not the children’s fault that their leaders are at war.

Belinda: […] Innocent children, innocent women, they’re the people that always get hurt.

Imogen: Yes, they are blameless, really.

Bianca: It touches something in us all […] these are children […] they’re all God’s children, they’re vulnerable, they’re innocent, they’ve done no harm.

These quotes express the general sentiment that children are helpless, in need of protection, innocent and blameless. As such, children are ideal victims. This trope was repeated continuously in the focus groups and was only challenged in two cases where the child was considered as complicit and deceitful.² This notwithstanding, as ‘God’s children’ they have universal appeal. So much so, that many talked of their own and other people’s general reaction to images of children as automatic.

Quincy: As soon as you see children … it’s there for a reason. It’s just because that’s automatically what, you know, what any adult is going to go to. It’s, like, their child, again.

Lia: So I’ll probably donate … you know, a little kid will come on the TV and I’ll go, ‘oh, that’s terrible!!’, and probably donate to them. And it’s not to say that they’re any more deserving than other charities, but it’s just what touches your heart strings more I think.

Keath: Children, they’ll break your heart.

The statements portray a kind of automatic stimulus–response dynamic triggered by images of children. The metaphorical references to ‘heart’ and ‘heart strings’ present the response as autonomic, bypassing reason and touching directly on emotions. This suggests that the benign emotional response to suffering children and the desire to help them is so powerful, unquestioned and embedded that it occurs almost without conscious control. Participants explained this powerful phenomenon in various ways. Some made an explicit link between children and hope for the future.

Quinn: I’m very much more inclined to donate to children, because children are the future.

Gaynor: It’s very difficult not to be cynical, but I can’t be cynical where children are concerned, and we need to separate children charities, […] Well, if you don’t help the children the world is never going to be a better place.

For many, the identification with and support of children had been part of their lives for a long time, often starting at school age. For some, knowledge of children’s suffering was their first exposure to suffering outside their family, marking the beginning of their engagement with humanitarian causes.

Bianca: I think mine (first memory) was we used to have little sales on the front doorstep, bring and buy things for the children. It was always for the Biafran children and things like that, and it was the first thing I ever remember seeing, children from Biafra that were suffering and with swollen bellies and things like that. And I think that’s the first memory I have of thinking, ‘Dear God, is this, you know, what is going on in the world?’

The empathic connection described above motivates people to help children because they are worse off than the self. Others, explicitly or implicitly, referred to an empathic connection based on identification with the suffering of the child in the communication.

Ianthe: I was very much on my own then because I had problems with my mum. And I also give to charities for children, you know, that need help, that are, I’m not saying I was abused but children, you know, to help abused children – Barnardo’s, that sort of thing. And that is because of my personal experience, because being a child on your own is not a nice thing. And so I do feel very sorry for these poor children in Africa.

This highlights the role of empathy via personal history in the resulting reparative motivation to try to help vicariously the child they used to be through helping the distant suffering child.

Often biographically based recognition of the suffering portrayed in the humanitarian communication triggered a desire to help in response. This was particularly strong in the case of participants who were parents.

Bianca: This is very emotive and I think particularly because I’m female. There’s something about it especially if you’re a mum.

Quincy: Oh, they all pull at me […] especially because I’ve just got a young child myself.

Many other quotes also explained participants’ emotional response by the transferability of parental protectiveness onto any suffering child. Such was the strength of this assumption that it was projected into the future as an unavoidable and unquestionable fact, exemplified in the exchange between Layla, already a mother, and Lia, who did not have children but was pregnant at that time:

Lia: I donate to things that pull on my heart strings. I donate to animal charities because I love animals, so if a cute little puppy comes on the TV. […] I don’t donate to children’s charities, but in a couple of months, you know, obviously, I’ll probably be more … hopefully more into children, so I’ll probably … [laughter].

Layla: Yes. […] I think before I had children I don’t think I was, kind of, particularly fussed about children’s charity, but now, every time I see anything I’m like, ‘oh my God’. So watch out.

The examples above show how communications portraying children are universally recognized, provoke immediate responses in audiences and are often considered to have special, automatic appeal.

Managing empathic connections

Although the sanctity of childhood was never questioned in the focus groups and undoubtedly there was a consistent response towards the children depicted, how people responded to being confronted by these images and to their own emotive response to the images varied considerably. For instance, the connection with the suffering child via parenthood made people feel grateful for their good fortune, but it also provoked fear and anxiety.

Lane: It’s like Comic Relief this year, watching it and seeing those clips. I mean, you know, my husband was in tears as well, which I don’t know if it would have affected … I mean, he turned round and, you know, says, ‘You know, we’ve got Scarlett, we’re so lucky’ and you know, so I do think once you’ve got children then those sort of things perhaps pull at you more than they would, because it’s very easy to sit there and just go, how lucky, you know, you’re like: ‘For the grace of God that could be me, that could be my child. How fortunate are we that my daughter can get medication at the drop of a hat.’

As in the case above, many did not resist this stimulus, considered it legitimate and unproblematic, and responded with an express wish to make a donation (although not necessarily acting on this intention), but others recognized it as a well-used mode of communication and responded with a tired and often irritated reaction.

Kane: All these things [the communications], they say the same story, don’t they? Well, it’s, you know, poverty, children, and need help. […] I think they put the children to the front, because they […] know people will willingly give to children, in the main.

Damien: I think it’s desensitization, isn’t it? You know, it’s in your face so often, it becomes normal, which is frightening in itself.

Mary: […] I think you become a bit desensitized too … You see so many images of children like that these days, don’t you? […] But it’s not as shocking as like the first time, few times you see it, you know. You see it all the time on the news and in leaflets like this and in the papers and things like that so it has lost its shock value for me, personally.

These are complex statements, but all conveying a tired response to what is perceived as an overuse of images of children. The expression of this sentiment was as ubiquitous in the focus groups as that of the sanctity of children. What differed was the response. For some, the constant presence of child images was perceived as the legitimate expression of an on-going problem, but others found this problematic and counterproductive. Kane, who perceives the use of children as a successful trick to get viewers’ attention, responds by lumping together the communications whose specific message gets lost amongst all the others saying ‘the same thing’. Damien argues that the too-frequent use of children’s imagery, which he perceives to be ‘in your face so often’, leads to habituation and desensitization which, importantly, extends to the horrors depicted in the communication as a result. Similarly, Mary refers to habituation and the resulting escalation of levels of shock and horror needed to keep viewers’ attention.

For reasons opposite to the habituation lamented above, the emotional potency of images of suffering children was problematic and counterproductive when they caused too much upset in the viewer. In these cases, the very dynamics of emotional transferability and parental identification that make the depiction of child suffering so powerful for many, make them unbearable for others.

Renée: There was a group [of communications] that I couldn’t even look at, and it’s not because … it’s not because I don’t agree with them, it’s not because it’s something that doesn’t interest me, it’s, I think, the fact that I am heavily, heavily pregnant and I have young children. The fact that I see anything like that makes me extremely emotional. So rather than burst into tears in front of all of you, it’s just like, I’m … you have to kind of try and detach yourself from it, especially if you have children, because you look at those faces, and you see the faces of your own kids, and that just kills you.

As Renée explicitly says, it is not indifference or lack of care that makes her turn away from appeals depicting children, it is self-protective distancing. Seeing the faces of her own children in the faces of the distant sufferer is too much to bear.

Dominic: I don’t look at the children’s [communications], it’s in your face every day of the week, so I just switch off, […] the children’s one, you walk down the street, there’s a billboard, you walk down ten minutes later, there’s another billboard, and it’s on the telly, and I’ve timed it, every advert that comes on TV, it’s Help The Children, Help The Children, you get to the stage you just turn and walk away, it’s too much in your face, the kids,

Dominic also seems to be referring to over-exposure but, similarly to Renée, his experience that kids are ‘too much in your face’ also suggests that he is upset by these images and he needs to manage the emotions they evoke in him. The metaphors of physical separation used by both Renée and Dominic not only convey attitude, but also express how they cope with the disturbing emotions by detaching themselves, switching off and walking away.

The importance of context: Children–viewer–NGO dynamics

The next section of data analysis concentrates on the many comments highlighting the importance of context in participants’ responses to images of children.

Francine: It’s like this quote from the kids […] I don’t want to read that. It’s just too much. Because you’re like putting yourself in that position and you start to feel it yourself and it’s not fair to play with emotions like that and it’s not nice. You can’t imagine what they’ve gone through and you don’t want to imagine what they’ve gone through, so I won’t read it.

Here the empathy (‘putting yourself in that position’) that the communication is trying to evoke, brings too much painful closeness and the resulting defensive response of avoidance. It also causes resentment towards the agencies that Francine perceives as unfairly ‘playing with (her) emotions’.

Keanu: They show you all the acts and Children in Need, and then next thing you see is children, babies, black babies in arms, with their parents, covered in flies, ‘please give to these’, you know. My wife looks at that, and she turns it off. Because (it’s) not that she won’t do anything … it upsets her. She won’t watch it because she gets … she emotionally gets upset. She thinks, ‘well, what can we do?’ We give money, but then they keep wanting more, you know, they don’t seem to be doing anything about it. ‘We give you money, and nothing’s happening.’ Every year you get the same situation, wanting more money, more money, more money, because there are more children, more children, more children. Where’s the end of it?

Similarly to other participants, Keanu is unequivocal about the refusal to engage with distressing images portraying children ‘with flies in the eyes’ because they are too upsetting. Keanu’s statement is complex and touches on other important issues that cannot be discussed here (for example, the expression of caring overload, the perception that there is an ever increasing number of charities, and that funds are not used appropriately by the agencies (see Seu, 2013)). Importantly, as it was the case with Francine earlier on, Keanu hints at another familiar trope which has been identified as a frequently used vocabulary of denial ‘all they want is my money’ (Seu, 2011a), a rhetoric to justify not responding to distant suffering. Except that Keanu and his wife are already emotionally and financially responsive to humanitarian issues. So, denial does not describe their experience. Indeed, in their case, the over-use of images of suffering children is detrimental to their existing commitment to humanitarianism as, by sheer and decontextualized repetition, it conveys that giving money is actually futile: ‘We give you more and nothing is happening’.

These statements add a very important layer of meaning and illustrate how audiences are critically and self-reflexively aware of their responses towards the appeal makers. The participants’ sophistication and awareness of the context of the communication portraying children is also demonstrated in the complex responses to being interpellated as parents. We can see how participants did not simply or naïvely respond to images of suffering children, but reflexively used the knowledge gained from being a parent to resist the ‘selling’.

Dominic: […] kids is a selling point. I had two, you know, you want selling points, go to your grandparents, they will give you it, and sure as hell, they bought it, you know, children will sell. They will sell you anything, and that’s why they’re using, and it just turns me off.

Daniel: I’m afraid, starving children, I tend to overlook it, I’m really sorry, you know, I think it’s been done quite a lot, personally. […] I mean, you know, you want to be drawn to it really, because it’s advertising isn’t it, so to me, that’s quite striking, as an image, and without sounding really heartless, the ones with these starving children on, I do overlook.

Similarly to others, Daniel is torn between what would be his natural sympathetic and empathetic response to suffering children (‘you want to be drawn to it really’) and the awareness that what he is presented with is ‘advertising’. The metaphorical use of heart reappears here, but as an absence. Daniel is keen to clarify that although his response might be wrongly viewed as ‘heartless’, he is in fact disconnecting from what he perceives as a commercial ploy. This very common response uncovers an important differentiation between how audiences understand, emotionally react and respond to the children themselves depicted in the communication and to the agencies appealing on their behalf.

Oscar: [the problem] is the organization, not the child or the woman for whatever reason they’re in this. […] it isn’t the child, is it? We all want to help the child but what we fear is where our money goes in that organization

These statements illustrate how when people’s responses to images of children are examined in the triad child–viewer–NGO (rather than in the dyadic child–viewer dynamic), the responses are fundamentally different, and empathy for the children is accompanied by anger and resentment towards the NGO.

Renée: I just don’t appreciate being bombarded with the images of dying children. I think it’s a guilt strategy more than anything else, […] I just think if you put an image of a dying baby in front of us, what are you trying to achieve? Is it shock value? You know, it’s not necessarily going to make me pick up the phone, to be honest, it just makes me change the channel, because I just get so emotional about it. […] that is just going to have the opposite effect for me. That’s just going to go ‘oh my God that is a trauma, turn away right now.’

Renée’s account of why she turns away from images of dying children mixes the backfiring of guilt when it is perceived to be used manipulatively (Cotte et al., 2005) with a justification of her emotional self-distancing as a self-protective move caused by the traumatic impact of the disturbing imagery (Seu, 2003, 2013). It is significant that the context in which this narrative is provided is not the parental and protective discourse articulated in the child–viewer dynamic, but a consumerist discourse, where the viewer feels positioned as consumer by the communication perceived as advert (Seu, 2013). In this triadic context, when the use of children was experienced as manipulative and emotional blackmail, a common occurrence, the emotional tone was dramatically different. This reflexive decoding of humanitarian communications operates a shift in their audiences from an engagement with distant suffering to a questioning of the motives of the messenger and the trustworthiness of the agencies.

I conclude with a statement from Jonathan because it summarizes many of the points made by other participants across all the focus groups, but also because it contains a cautionary tale of the potential dangers of both over-using images of children and a consequent hardening of public attitudes towards humanitarian communications in general.

Jonathan: Like, I mean, you’re walking through a shopping centre, and there’s people getting in your face, they walk in front of you and they go, try and get you to give to charity or talk to you about something. I think we start to build up this thing where, because of that, because we are getting it shoved down our throats quite a lot, and like, when the advert’s on the television, crying children and stuff like that, yes, you do get completely desensitized, and you start to develop this hard skin towards it, where you don’t look any further, because you’re so used to seeing it.

Jonathan is describing a process of double desensitization. On the one hand, a desensitization to images of children because of their overuse, but also the development of immunity towards humanitarian messages in general. This, he argues, is because of the constant and increasingly aggressive demands made by humanitarian agencies. The language that Jonathan uses is powerful and contains strong physical metaphors of aggressive blocking on the part of NGOs and metaphors of violent and forced entrance to which Jonathan responds with increased resistance through the development of a metaphorical ‘hard skin’. The development of such stronger and increasingly harder-to-penetrate boundaries is problematic both for NGOs in terms of their diminished capacity to communicate to the public, and for humanitarian issues because of people’s disconnection from humanitarian imagery and messages at an initial stage.

Discussion

There is plenty of support from our data that, as many have argued (Burman, 2008; Moeller, 1999; O’Dell, 2008a, 2008b; Suski, 2010), children are indeed perceived to be the ideal victim because of their helplessness, innocence and their need of protection. Accordingly, humanitarian communications portraying suffering children make a strong emotional impact, evoke empathy in audiences, and activate a wish to protect the children. Children were constructed in the participants’ accounts as holding a special status and having a direct line to people’s hearts, with a more immediate and perhaps stronger force than rational moral codes of justice and fairness. Indeed, many described their responses as immediate and automatic, which supports claims made in the literature (Burman, 1994, 2008, Kinsey, 1987; Moeller, 1999; Tester, 2001).

Echoing one of the participants who defined them as ‘God’s children’, images of distant suffering children in humanitarian communications have universal appeal and the children are experienced by the UK public as ‘everybody’s children’, thus supporting – to some extent – critiques of hegemonic notions of universal childhood (Burman, 2008; Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers, 1992). However, although some participants showed some general awareness of a connection between colonialism and humanitarian practices, the data provided no evidence that people were aware or concerned about the socio-historical and cultural roots and meanings of current conceptualizations of childhood, or that the parent–child ethical relationship – replicated in humanitarian appeals – might be problematic and dangerous for global ethical relationships (Suski, 2009). On the contrary, participants seemed to relate and use childhood as unproblematically carrying universal connotations as well as having personal emotional resonance. This lack of awareness might support the view that, indeed, current western constructions of childhood are perceived as undisputedly normal and universal (Burman, 2008).

Thus, childhood appeared to operate as a psychosocial site for the rehearsal of people’s familiar moral principles, in particular caring and parenthood and in which, through empathic connections and identification, the distant child becomes the viewer’s own child. Childhood also offered participants a psychosocial canvas onto which hopes for the future, regrets and wishes for reparation for their own lives were emotively projected (Pupavac, 2001). For some of the participants, their spirit of compassion mapped onto a wish for self-reparation, whereby the distant suffering child offers an opportunity for a vicarious salvation of their own wounded childhood.

At the same time, ‘as the “poorest of the poor”, children function in the discourse of development as testaments to international suffering. […] Their fundamental narrative role is to plead for the restoration of their childhood’ (Suski, 2009: 207). In all these senses, then, a suffering child is the quintessential humanitarian subject, and their innocence and blamelessness is key to children being symbols of the humanitarian spirit itself and the emotional pull they confer on humanitarian appeals. The data suggest that, because of all these reasons, images of children still have the potential to make a powerful impact on audiences, evoke empathy and stimulate a wish to take care of the child. As such they remain powerful fundraising stimuli. This, to some extent, is a familiar and unsurprising narrative, one that agencies are well versed in, considering the abundant use of children in humanitarian communications. But this is only one side of the story.

Even within the relatively untroubled dyadic viewer–suffering child relationship, the analysis identified two problematic effects of using disturbing images of children suffering – their negative emotional impact and desensitization due to overexposure – both provoking audiences to switch off and distance themselves.

The findings of this study support the concerns expressed in the literature about the counterproductive effects of habituation and desensitization (Seu, 2013; Tester, 2001). In terms of emotions, considering that the uniqueness of humanitarianism arguably ‘lies in its character as an emotion-based impulse and, also, in the way that it is an active response: a humanitarian intends to alleviate the suffering of others’ (Suski, 2009: 210, italics in the original), the counterproductive emotional responses are also concerning. When the communications are too distressing, the same factors that make successful use of children’s imagery backfire. For example, many parents found the images unbearable and self-protectively ‘switched off’. Seu and Orgad (2014) have shown that – although arousing people’s emotions is essential for caring responses – these emotions must be appropriate and people need to be able to manage them. Guilt in particular, considered by many a cornerstone of the emotional basis of humanitarianism (Cohen, 2001) together with sympathy, empathy and compassion, has been shown to backfire when people experience an emotional loop of self-reflexive reactions to their own reactions (Seu, 2013: 162). Particularly in the case of parents, participants displayed a critical awareness of their own propensity to automatically empathize in response to the images. In both the cases of self-protective distancing and backfiring of guilt, when participants experienced NGOs as playing with their feelings or that their emotions were aroused with manipulative and exploitative intentions, participants responded with resentment and desensitization. This reinforces existing awareness of the counterproductive effect of shock tactics and suggests that increased caution should be applied when using disturbing images of suffering.

Conclusion

Although the power of children imagery per se remains undisputed, public reaction changes drastically when images of suffering children are considered within the triadic audience–children–NGO relationship. Hence, the usefulness of images of suffering children in humanitarian communications can be properly gauged only in the context of media saturation, audiences being sophisticated and media-savvy about appeals and communications, and a general attitude of distrust and dissatisfaction with the marketization of NGOs. Indeed, it is within the context of being used by NGOs in manipulative and exploitative ways that child imagery no longer has simply a positive impact on audiences and can also provoke resistance, distancing and animosity. There is an emerging perspective in advertising research of the consumer as an active, sceptical reader of emotional tactics. Cotte et al.’s (2005) experimental study found that adverts that are not overtly manipulative induce guilt feelings and positive attitudes, but when consumers infer manipulative intent by the marketer, they do not feel guilty, but do have negative attitudes towards the sponsor of the advertisement. Similarly, Seu et al. (2015) have looked at issues of trust and confidence in non-profit organizations and humanitarian NGOs and how they increasingly perceive them as operating as marketer rather than the preferred good Samaritans. We found that the UK public feel deep disillusionment, disappointment and distrust deriving from the recognition of the marketer model being applied to and employed within the realm of humanitarianism.

The overall findings of the study suggest that the NGOs–UK public relationship is in crisis and that the predominant form of emergency communication, which uses highly emotive imagery and employed by NGOs for fundraising purposes, is problematic in the long term. We have seen how the public’s experience of being bombarded with images of suffering children can evoke a lumping response which dismisses all humanitarian communication as formulaic. Participants have also made reference to the development of a ‘hard skin’, metaphorical of a hardening of positions on the part of the public which makes communication harder to get through. This self-defensive and antagonistic response to NGO communications can have detrimental consequences for public connection with the suffering other and a commitment to the humanitarian spirit.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was funded through a 3 year research grant from the Leverhulme Trust (F/07 112/Y), for which I am very grateful.

Notes

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