The Unrelenting Media Exposure in Pakistan and its Link with Vicarious Trauma

Abstract

The present study investigated the impact of Unrelenting Media Exposure on experiences of Vicarious Trauma among adolescents in Pakistan. For this a purposive sample comprising 150 boys and 150 girls with an age range of 12 to 18 years participated in this research study. Impact of Event Scale (Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979) was used to measure the symptoms of vicarious trauma regarding the 16th December Peshawar incident. A self-report questionnaire was designed to measure the unrelenting media exposure of organized violence. Findings of the present study indicated that media exposure significantly predicted vicarious trauma (B (298) = 113.71, p <= 0.001 ) A significant difference (p < 0.001) was found among the students of three institutions that are public, private and government schools in the context of their response to unrelenting trauma exposure and gender differences. A limitation to the study is that the research was conducted in the twin cities of Pakistan only due to easy access and availability of respondent data. A more meaningful picture could have been obtained if the research was conducted in schools of Peshawar.