
People killed in terrorist attacks in 2017: Europe vs. Africa - mgalka
http://www.rts.ch/info/monde/9016433-le-terrorisme-tue-vingt-fois-plus-en-afrique-qu-en-europe.html
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danso
Reminds me of a project the NYT did a year ago, The Human Toll of Terror:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-t...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/27/world/human-
toll-of-terror-attacks.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-
vi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/insider/terror-attacks-victims-
reporting.html)

They decided during a "particularly intense spate of attacks back in March" to
cover all of the victims as much as possible. This period included the 32
killed in Brussels, but that ended up being the only attack in the West. The
rest were in Africa and Asia, and were generally barely covered by the world
media.

It took the NYT team, which looked like a couple dozen staffers and reporters,
about a third of a year to publish the project. They were only able to find
222 of the 247 known victims -- some of the attacks took place in locales
where local officials didn't collect the information themselves. It's a
project I use as an example of "data journalism", the kind that's incredibly
hard and constly to collect.

~~~
fishcolorbrick
I think a William Gibson-ish take-away from that report is that there is an
inverse relationship between how someone's death is covered and how difficult
it is to find data about that person.

Famous TV star from the 70s who hasn't done anything notable in 40 years dies
of a heart attack? Easy mass of data and media available leads to a
proliferation of heart-felt articles about that one time they were guest stars
on Gilligan's Island.

Kenyan political activist is tortured to death by Al-Shabaab? Aggregated into
a statistic somewhere.

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DanielleMolloy
I don't understand the intention of this comparison. Does this make anything
better? Is this considered surprising? Is anybody relieved now because the
next vacation to Europe was about to be cancelled in fear of terror attacks?
Is anybody "relieved" because when counting lost human souls Europe is not
that badly affected after all (because counting bodies apparently is a thing)?
Does this make any of these terror attacks less bad?

Echo chamber fueled extremism is on the rise and affects people worldwide.
Whoever has not realized how much terrorism is going on worldwide is advised
to step out of their local news filter bubble. Wikipedia is maintaining some
meticulous lists on terrorists incidents:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents)

~~~
andrepd
The point, as I'm sure you realise, is that the media coverage of attacks in
Europe is tremendous, whereas nobody talks about the order of magnitude
greater loss of life going on in poorer countries. This is objectively very
wrong.

~~~
BigJono
Why?

If you're an average citizen in the US, Europe, Australia etc, then why
wouldn't you care more about attacks in other western countries than you would
about attacks in Africa?

The majority of people in western countries aren't planning a trip to Somalia
or Syria any time soon. They don't look for jobs there, they don't have family
there, and by and large they have very little reason to care about anything
that happens there, as long as it doesn't affect them globally.

It shouldn't be any surprise that "major terrorist attack in a country I
holidayed/interviewed/was born in" is a much bigger story to most people than
"major terrorist attack in Africa".

Is it not the news's job to report the news that's most relevant to the
audience? I'm not saying that European terrorist attacks should be plastered
all over the front page and on the TV 24/7 (on the contrary, I too think it's
overhyped), but I also don't think African terrorist attacks should be, for
the same reason I don't particularly want the weather forecast for Nairobi in
my news. It's not that I have any particular opinions about it, of course I
want them to have nice weather and no bushfires or blizzards or hurricanes or
anything, but at the end of the day it's just not relevant to me.

~~~
Larrikin
My connection to France and really any European country is about the same as
my connection to the countries in Africa. Why do you assume average Americans
have some inherent connection that is much stronger than to other continents?

~~~
AstralStorm
You can read Reuters, CNN and BBC right?

Of the three mentioned only Reuters sometimes covers situation in Africa and
certain parts of Asia.

So if you read or watch or listen to any of the latter two you are likely at
least somewhat informed about Europe and China, though in a slanted way.

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burntrelish1273
For the lazy (Google Translate):

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rts.ch%2Finfo%2Fmonde%2F9016433-le-
terrorisme-tue-vingt-fois-plus-en-afrique-qu-en-europe.html&edit-text=)

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AnimalMuppet
In French. The graphic is pretty clear, though. Europe is in blue; Africa is
in red.

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TaylorAlexander
It makes me wonder:

How can we ever expect to solve the biggest problems when we’re ignoring them?

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musage
They're not being ignored as much as being fueled. Just for starters, how many
weapons used in Africa by dictators and terrorists are not made in Africa?

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barrkel
There are over twice as many people in Africa as Europe, mind.

~~~
x1798DE
The article says that there are more than 20x as many victims of terrorism in
Africa, though...

~~~
barrkel
And there are about 6x as many victims of road accidents. And I guess almost
every barometer of law and order will be worse in Africa; for tail events like
terrorism, you'd expect more extreme differences.

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ars
I can't read it, is Israel included? And if so, are they included under Europe
of Africa?

What about Egypt? What percent of the total is Egypt?

~~~
Tech-Noir
Israel is not in Europe; nor is it in Africa.

~~~
praneshp
An interesting aside is that Israel football team is considered part of Europe
for the Euros/World cup.

~~~
ucaetano
It isn't "considered" part of Europe, it just plays with European teams.

Israel also takes part in Eurovision.

~~~
crispinb
> Israel also takes part in Eurovision

So do we (Australia), but I'm sure we can't be in Europe because we don't have
cycling lanes.

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ekianjo
Good points made but the little human-based infographic is just an horrible
way to represent data.

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tmalsburg2
Why?

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ekianjo
There is no clear reason for it to take so much space to represent so little
data.

~~~
grantcox
Every one of those icons is a human life lost to a _terrorist attack_. This is
both a tragedy without compare to family and neighbourhood, and one of the
most appalling events in our modern world (people being murdered
indiscriminately to further political aims).

Trying to convey that weight is _entirely_ the point of the infographic.

