Understanding the negotiation of the NGO demand to help

In their work around denial, theorists Cohen, Seu and Chouliaraki bring together fields of sociology, psychology and media studies to further explore how people respond to the humanitarian appeal. Cohen (2001) notes three types of overlapping psychosocial denial: literal, interpretive and implicatory. For implicatory denial, whereby people do not deny the event but the moral implications that follow it, he argues that the vocabularies around these are “increasing and becoming more convoluted as they are used to attempt to bridge the moral and psychic gap between ‘what you know and what you do”’(as discussed in Seu, 2010, p. 442). Cohen is arguing that in not wanting to engage in an appeal to assist, people use verbal techniques to morally position themselves so that they do not look bad in the eyes of others. For example, ‘I didn’t give any money to that charity because I’m not exactly sure where the money all goes’. These interpretative repertoires or accounts can be drawn upon by anyone and they are very ordinary, but they call upon a higher sense of ‘what everybody knows’. In the example above it is assumed that everyone knows that there is suspicion around charity spending. This supports what Radley and Kennedy found as discussed above, that people call upon certain conventions and strategies in their negotiations. They give reasons for not taking action.

In her qualitative research around accounts of denial, Seu (2010) identified three interpretative repertoires used with regards to an appeal. In the first, the medium is the message and the focus is on the attributed manipulation of the appeal. The second attacks the messenger, the NGOs, and the third questions the validity of the appeal’s suggested action. This type of research is exploratory, and Seu argues it has wider implications for debates about humanitarianism, representation and even morality. She concludes that the voice of the distant Other can become lost in the relationship between the viewer and the NGO, and that increasingly, the NGO is seen as another actor on the media playing field, tarred with the same suspicious brush of spin and conjecture. Seu argues that discursive accounts are a better portrayal of what people actually think and do, as the audience draws upon common repertoires which need further analysis. Finally, she has an interesting conclusion which is relevant for this study. She finds no evidence for the assumed emotive responses of pity, compassion and empathy, as most of the emotional force by the participants in her study was spent

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on self-protection. This response to defend the integrity of the self, as a moral person who chooses not to take action, is self-orientated and strengthens the distance between the audience and the Other.

In Seu’s work, as well as the previous studies discussed, the methodology of focus groups, open-ended discussion and paying attention to the discursive account recognizes the agency of the viewer of NGO images to negotiate the message and the appeal. It is also significant that in the discussions, certain tropes or repertoires are identifiable and they can inform us about common ideas and perceptions that people have. These conventions and strategies are not just what people bring to the discussion; they are also formed during them as people support or disagree with one another. The participants’ accounts are not an accurate account of reality because they are an account of what the participants, together with the interviewer, make of their world at the time (Silverman & Marvasti, 2008, p. 195) In these studies the participants were adults operating under their own free will. They were asked to be part of focus groups. That they did not always respond positively to the NGO’s appeals indicates that they were free from any NGO restraint; they did not have to be polite. The question this study raises is, are these conventions and strategies the same or different for a younger audience in a different context?

Considering this work from the various disciplines concerning audience interpretation, many are from a broad social constructivist background. For social constructivists knowledge is created or constructed within the context that it is derived (Silverman, 2006). This stress on the situated context and emphasis on audience constructions particularly in media studies is not without its critics. Philo and Millar (2000) take up this reliance on what people make of reality arguing:

The encounter with philosophy and post-modern theory has left much cultural / communications studies and indeed many other areas of social science, struggling with the notion of small groups or individuals ‘actively’ constructing their own interpretations and the meaning of their world. A key problem in such an approach is the neglect of outcomes or consequences. For example, asking about how people interpret texts cannot of itself answer

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questions about the influence of the media on ideology or belief. Such questions need to be asked directly. (Philo and Millar, 2000, p. 6)

This study notes these concerns and agrees with Sayer (2009) that critical social science research should not stop at the descriptive, but should examine the structures of power that are at work to constrain people’s choices. While this study is interested in how young people construct meanings from NGO media, it also includes wider contextual constraints, such as their teacher’s role in using NGO material. In a similar manner to Chouliaraki’s (2006) examination of media representations, this study does not place young people as autonomous creators of knowledge, they are specifically influenced by aspects of the development sector that may appear to be taken for granted. They may not be aware of this power to influence their way of thinking about development or the developing world. It is this exposure of both the power of the development sector and the agency of the young people that make the approach of this study unique.

That the development sector can publicise its work and represent the developing world in schools is not a given; NGOs actively seek an opportunity and some are denied entry. School leadership often decides which charities to support and they are often a mixture of local, regional and international causes. NGOs that provide education material that supports the curriculum are likely to be welcomed by teachers. NGOs occupy a market space, selling a commodity: poverty and injustice alleviation (Hutnyk, 2004; Jefferess, 2002; Lidchi, 1993). The reception of their work by both teachers and students is not guaranteed to be how they envisage it. Some teachers are happy to use NGO material, while others may be more cautious. In a similar vein, campaigns that occur within the school environment may receive a mixed reception. Exploring this diversity while paying attention to the power structures is part of this study’s postdevelopment approach that heeds the concerns of Sayer and Philo as discussed above. The next section focusses on the key debates and research concerning the extent of the NGO presence within the classroom of the developed world.

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