Boko Oh No!!

With all the news about the recent attacks in Paris, a recent terror attack seems to fly under the radar. This is not surprising considering it occurred in African Nigeria. The attacks were performed by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the town of Baga. With the amount of killing that happens in other countries, why do we hear about some and not others?

I think the main reason we didn’t hear about Baga is because of its competition. The competition in the news media played a big part of this. Terrorist attacks in developed countries like France, England, and The United States do not happen very often. Because of this fact, that is where most of the mainstream media was able to focus on. This is an event that was captured on camera by various people, and was spread around the world via social networks. Having this kind of publicity was the main driving factor. 

In countries like Nigeria, where social media and internet access is not as accessible, this automatically gives it less of a chance. In addition to the access, in an area that is so socially controlled by the Boko Haram, it is hard to verify the attacks with much accuracy. How many people were really killed? Was there any footage? In the movie "Training Day" Denzel Washington says to Ethan Hunt "It’s not what you know, it's what you can prove". This fits for this example because there is so little evidence and publicity. These events have become the norm in these war torn third world countries. Because it has sadly become the norm, it takes more killing and destruction to actually make the news. We have seen this in cases like the abduction of over 300 girls from a local school and a social movement with the trending tag of #brignbackourgirls. About 50 or so of the girls have escaped or been returned but the rest are still missing. These kinds of events were able to get the social recognition and help bring some media to Africa, but most cases it doesn’t happen. 

Despite the fact that most stories don’t make the mainstream media, they are still happening and as consumers of information, we have to take a proactive role to seek out these unknown, lightly reported stories and help share the message, when others won’t.