When I first read the heartbreaking news about Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels, cartoons were the first thing on my mind.
Scanning Twitter from my seat on my morning train, it wasn’t more than two minutes before I found what I was looking for, in the form of this powerful image drawn by Le Monde cartoonist Jean “Plantu” Plantureux.
LES ATTENTATS CE MARDI 22 MARS À BRUXELLES.
(Le dessin du Monde) pic.twitter.com/9OCYMhOCpf
— PLANTU (@plantu) March 22, 2016
Given the way hundreds of thousands of people tweeted, Instagrammed, and re-blogged images like this Eiffel Tower peace sign following the terrorist attacks in Paris during November 2015, I had a feeling people would be sharing Plantu’s image with a similar fervor. As a viral news reporter, I would need to report on the image.
As I walked to work, I started brainstorming the list of stories, in addition to the cartoon, I knew my team and I would likely be covering throughout the day. We’d scan the internet for stories of unlikely heroes, hashtags used to help victims, and Facebook profile pictures and national monuments decorated with the yellow, black, and red of the Belgian flag.
“At least for many people in the United States this week, parents still had to make sure kids had breakfast, that everyone got to school, that work got done. We still had to accomplish all these things,” he said. “If we didn’t have these small ways of diffusing some of that discomfort, we would be paralyzed.”
While I wish I could say that Tuesday was the last time I’ll scan Twitter for hashtags and heroes following a terrorist attack, I know it likely isn’t. So I asked Dr. Foreman if he thought we could, or even should, try and break these habits.
So for now, natural is looking to cartoons for answers.
This article was originally published on Tech Insider. Read the original article here.
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