The visualization of poverty on social media: The promise of visibility as a new form of charity

We mostly question why one exhibits bad attitudes and has malicious feelings against others, whereas we accept without questioning a good behavior or a benevolent feeling. This study, therefore, sets out to investigate why we help the poor with unquestionable benevolence. This thesis also explores who and which institutions have helped the poor since the Middle Ages and the real motives behind these aids by focusing on "the approach towards the poor" which has undergone a severe change in accordance with the mode of production of the age. By investigating the relationship between poverty and city, this study reveals not only how the poor have gradually been made invisible, but also, in an opposite manner, how the poverty and the poor have been spectacularized through television and social media. This thesis suggests that publishing the pictures of poor people on social media seems to become equivalent with helping the poor, after the practices of the Church, workhouses, welfare state and non-governmental organizations. The promise of visibility, therefore, becomes a new form of charity and this indicates a new phase in helping the poor.