The role of the media during disasters

Vasterman et al. (2005: 107) suggest that disasters “cannot be studied without focusing on the role of the mass media”. This is because the news of a disaster, or the information about its occurrence, most often reaches people through the media (Granatt 1999: 104). Quarantelli observes:

we think a strong case can be made that what average citizens and officials expect about disasters, what they come to know on ongoing disasters, and what they learned from disasters that have occurred, are primarily if not exclusively learned from mass media accounts. (Quarantelli, cited in Scanlon 2007: 416)

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Joye (2010^a: 587) supports this when he argues that “[f]or most people living in the so-called developed world, disasters are a priori foreign news. When a foreign society undergoes severe damage and incurs such losses to its members, most Western spectators receive this information not first-hand or by personal experience, but through the media”. According to Granatt (1999: 104), the reasons for this are straightforward because the media are information processors whose techniques and technology allow them to deal with disasters more resourcefully, faster and more accessibly “than anybody else involved”.

However, as a result of this, audiences who are not amid the events “become particularly reliant upon the media to inform them” (Happer and Philo 2013:

321). This leads to the media being attributed with a power to represent and shape our understanding of events (Joye 2010^a: 586). Carter (2013: 1), for instance, points out: “Since the news is written, journalists are essentially telling stories about what events occur. Such narrations are usually framed in a certain context;

they represent reality subjectively rather than objectively” (Carter 2013: 8). This also means that the media can “focus on one aspect of reality, elevating the importance of that reality” (Carter 2013: 3, 1).

According to Cottle (2014: 10), this can “have far-reaching consequences for the [disaster] victims and survivors involved, relief agencies and the wider conduct of social relations”. Pantti et al. (2012: 5-6) note:

media and communications enter into their [the disasters’] course and conduct, shaping their forms of public elaboration and engagement and channeling disaster responses–as humanitarian agencies dependent on donations, political elites struggling to maintain control, and citizen activists and survivors struggling to be heard are keenly aware. (Pantti et al. 2012: 5-6).

Just as much as the media can “actually construct [the representation of]

disasters” (Benthall 1993: 27) and impact how they are understood and acted on,

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they also possess the power to decide when a disaster becomes a disaster in the public eye or, reversely, when it does not. Benthall (1993: 11), for instance, points out that the coverage of disasters by the media is arguably “so selective and arbitrary that, in an important sense, they ‘create’ a disaster when they give institutional endorsement or attestation to bad events which otherwise have a reality restricted to a local circle of victims”.

This means that some events are attributed with “intense media exposure and invested with emotions and calls for help”, while others are relatively unreported and neglected in the competition for the news receiver’s attention, help and action (Pantti et al. 2012: 4; Franks 2008: 27; Joye 2010^b: 260). Franks (2008: 27), for example, argues that disasters “exist only when they are covered by the media.

Plenty of terrible things happen that remain unreported. Most disasters are known about only by those directly affected” (Franks 2008: 27; Joye 2014: 580, 2010^b: 254).

The disasters that typically tend to receive media attention are those that are characterised by the unusual, suddenness and “high death counts” (Benthall 1993: 27). Cottle (2012: 259) refers to this as a “calculus of death”:

When reporting disasters, a terrible “calculus of death” has seemingly become institutionalized and normalized in the professional judgments, practices, and news values of the Western news media. Based on crude body counts and news thresholds as well as proximities of geography, culture and economic interests, this journalistic calculus recognizes some deaths, some disasters as more newsworthy than others. (Cottle 2012:

259).

Similarly, the media also play a defining role in deciding when the news of disasters ceases to be news. Indeed, Benthall (1993: 39-40) points out that there

“is increasing evidence that repeated or long-lasting emergencies do sap donor’s goodwill” because we as individuals are “able to think of good reasons for not

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responding to needs”. Therefore, when the media, “too, get the impression that a

… disaster has become a normal way of life, it thereby ceases to be news” (Benthall 1993: 39-40).

This phenomenon refers to the life cycle of disasters: It suggests that “the news media aggressively cover an issue for a short time, after which coverage [then]

fades as the event recedes into the past” (Kuttschreuter et al. 2011: 202; Gortner and Pennebarker 2003: 580). Birkland (2004: 179) attributes this to the fact that

“media, and public attention to issues, no matter how “big” the issues are, will fade over time, as “newer” news displaces the old issues”. The distinctive media coverages of sudden versus chronic disasters provide an example of this phenomenon (Benthall 1993: 39-40). Benthall observes:

Public disasters are like the private disasters affecting our individual lives.

Even the gravest of sudden accidents or misfortunes are made a little less difficult to bear because of the atmosphere of high drama that surrounds them, rallying support from relatives, friends and neighbours. It is the chronic, gnawing affliction which is most difficult to manage and assuage, and which too often fails to hold friends’ attention. This is true on the domestic scale, where we communicate as individuals one-to-one; it is no different on the public scale, when communication is through the mass media (Benthall 1993: 40)

Other functions of the media during disasters include its role as a warning, “early signalling” or rumour control system (Scanlon 2011: 237; Cottle 2014: 4); and its

“linkage” and “social utility” capacities (Perez-Lugo 2004: 212-213). The first aspect refers to the idea that the media in times of disasters can be used to pass on warnings if potential threats exist or put down false rumours (Scanlon 2011:

237-238). The idea behind “linkage” is that the media have the “ability … to unite people with similar interests” (Perez-Lugo 2004: 212). For example, this refers to

“people who are experiencing the impact of the same natural event” and can connect or establish social relations through the means of the media (Perez-Lugo

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2004: 212). Lastly, the function of “social utility” suggests that the media “fulfil needs other than the need for information” (Perez-Lugo 2004: 213). This approach assumes that “people need companionship and emotional support and that the media can provide them in the absence of other human beings” (Perez-Lugo 2004: 213).

This section highlighted how the media and “the information received from media shape[] our view of the world” (Joye 2010^a: 587). Based on previous academic literature, it established that the news of a disaster most often and almost exclusively reaches people through the media (Granatt 1999: 104). As previously discussed, this provides the media with a power to shape our understanding of events and positions them in a “leading role in the public constitution of disasters, conditioning how they become known, defined, responded to and politically aligned” (Pantti et al. 2012: 5; Joye 2010^a: 586).

Indeed, Joye (2013: 110) argues that “[i]n exercising their symbolic power, (news) media occupy a key position in social processes of for instance public understanding and political response”. This justifies the conduct of research on media representations.

The section predominantly focused on traditional mainstream media forms and neglected ideas regarding the increasing connectedness of the world and the upcoming use of multi-media forms through the rise of the Internet and social media. Theoretically, these ideas pose important objections to previous claims as they propose alternative pathways to access information and news. However, the next section demonstrates that, although these ideas can challenge previous theoretical assumptions, they are, at the time of writing, not reflecting dominant ways of news consumption. Therefore, the subsequent findings strengthen, rather than contradict, previous arguments in favour of research on traditional mainstream media forms.

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