"With 4 million refugees in neighbouring countries and six and a half million Internally Displaced Persons within Syria, communication tools have become critical for the Syrian population to maintain contact with their family and friends both inside and outside the country. The costs associated with
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phone calls and internet communication are relatively high, indicating that maintaining communication channels with family and friends is a priority regardless of the associated costs. In addition to the high costs related to communication and social media use, electricity remained a critical barrier to internet access. Batteries and internet cafes were the main coping measures used; however these could be costly and not always readily available. Another barrier to the use of social media platforms was privacy protection concerns related to both the reliability of privacy settings of one’s personal account and publications, which might limit the usage of social media platform to communicate sensitive information. Nonetheless, information published on all social media platforms was reported to be trusted by a large majority of key informants." (Conclusion)
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"Reducing risk and increasing resilience to natural disasters and climate change requires access to knowledge, information and the active participation of vulnerable population. Planning Communication for Agricultural Disaster Risk Management (ADRM) is a field guide to orient ADRM teams and concerne
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d stakeholders for the design and implementation of communication for development (ComDev) activities that will increase resilience and protect the livelihoods of rural communities. It builds on the experience gained in the Caribbean region as a result of FAO projects aimed at strengthening preparedness to natural disasters and improving community-based climate change adaptation. As a field guide, it provides a complete overview of how to assess rural people’s communication needs and how to plan and implement ComDev activities in the context of disaster risk management, crisis preparedness and emergency response in agriculture, food security and nutrition. It also provides guidance on how to apply ComDev to enhance the overall ADRM participatory planning and result monitoring processes, ensuring multi-stakeholder dialogue and participation." (Back cover)
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"How do interventions by the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court influence representations of mass violence? What images arise instead from the humanitarianism and diplomacy fields? How are these competing perspectives communicated to the public via mass media? Zooming in on the
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case of Darfur, Joachim J. Savelsberg analyzes more than three thousand news reports and opinion pieces and interviews leading newspaper correspondents, NGO experts, and foreign ministry officials from eight countries to show the dramatic differences in the framing of mass violence around the world and across social fields." (Publisher description)
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"Welcome to the Communication for Humanitarian Action Toolkit, CHAT. It has been designed with practitioners in mind and is a resource that you can work with and adapt as you strive towards your communication for humanitarian action goals. The toolkit provides guidance to humanitarian and developmen
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t organizations in the area of emergency communication strategy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It addresses several important aspects of communication during emergencies. These include a focus on providing essential emergency warnings, as well as communication that promotes behaviour change, community mobilization and action. Well-planned communication can help to promote community resilience and reduce vulnerability to a wide range of disasters and emergency situations." (Publisher description)
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"This document has been created to provide a broad overview of big data usage in humanitarian organisations and general guidance on how organisations can incorporate it into operations. It describes big data and its role within the humanitarian sector, offers a categorisation of the large variety of
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big data types, highlights benefits and risks of incorporating big data into response, identifies policy and ethical considerations for the organisation, and provides example materials organisations can use when starting the process of incorporating big data. The goal is to create dialogue and generate structure in the conversation among decision makers, data scientists, and volunteers and technical communities." (Executive summary)
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"Sudden-onset emergencies are typically chaotic, making effective communication between communities, humanitarian responders and governments, whether local or international, challenging. Building on experience from the response to Typhoon Bopha in Mindanao in 2012, the United Nations Office for the
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Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) supported the coordination of communication with disaster-affected communities following Typhoon Haiyan with the deployment of an interagency Communications with Communities (CwC) Coordinator and other CwC field staff. CwC cross-sectoral working groups were set up in the typhoon-affected area, convening local and international NGOs, UN agencies, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, media development actors, local media, mobile operators and local government, with the aim of coordinating two-way communication across the humanitarian response. This article provides a summary of findings from the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network Learning Review on the Typhoon Haiyan response." (Page 1)
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"The rapid and incredible growth of eyewitness media (also known as user-generated content or UGC) has led to the emergence of a new cadre of journalists, humanitarian and human rights professionals whose job it is to seek out, verify and edit the most disturbing and traumatic raw images captured by
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non professionals and posted online. These professionals are tasked with viewing and sifting through massive volumes of eyewitness media - that is, raw, unedited, authentic footage now captured regularly on smartphones - to enhance their investigations, reporting, operations, prosecutions and advocacy. Professionals who work with eyewitness media watch disturbing footage from war zones, natural and manmade disasters and accidents over and over again to verify its veracity and to edit out images that are deemed too extreme for viewing by the general public. Viewing traumatic images of death, destruction, blood and unimaginable horrors all day every day - often for years on end - is now an integral part of the daily work of many desk-bound staff working for news, human rights and humanitarian organisations who are often located thousands of miles away from where the actual horrors occur. Whether it is a broadcaster, publisher, human rights or humanitarian professional, symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are now evident amongst staff working in offices on what we call the digital frontline.
This study builds upon previous research that proved that viewing distressing eyewitness media can lead psychological injury, including, but not restricted to, such conditions as PTSD and major depression. The principle aim of this research is to explore the following questions: How much distressing eyewitness media are professionals, who work in the three professional sectors, watching? How frequently, and in what volumes are professionals viewing distressing eyewitness media? What kinds of eyewitness media do professionals find particularly distressing?" What coping mechanisms, if any, have been developed by staff to help mitigate the potentially negative effects of viewing distressing content? - What support, if any, do professionals receive from their organisations and senior managers? - Does organisational culture encourage or prevent professionals from requesting support from their organisation’s hierarchy? What training and preparation is provided to raise awareness of or mitigate the adverse impact of trauma exposure on university graduates, newcomers and those established in post? What resources do organisations provide to prevent, mitigate and treat the adverse impact of trauma exposure? Which of those resources have been used? Which are found to be the most useful? What do staff who experience vicarious trauma need and expect from their organisations in order to support them? Based on an online survey (to which we received 209 responses from people working with eyewitness media across all three professional sectors) and 38 in-depth, anonymous interviews we find that: the impact of eyewitness media on journalism, human rights and humanitarian work means that the frontline is no longer geographic. A new type of frontline has emerged that is digital. Staff at an organisation’s headquarters who work with eyewitness media do so daily and often see more horror on a daily basis compared to their counterparts deployed in the field. Consequently, organisations have a duty of care towards office based staff working on the digital frontline who are at serious risk of vicarious trauma and PTSD [...] " (Executive summary, page 3-5)
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"Voice—understood as the ability to give an account of oneself and participate in social processes—is increasingly recognized as significant for humanitarian action and disaster recovery. Giving disaster-affected people the opportunity to make their voices heard has the potential to democratize
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humanitarianism and correct the power asymmetries on which it is based. Humanitarian agencies have embraced interactive communication technologies as tools for voice and participation. Drawing on a yearlong ethnography with communities affected by super-Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, this article assesses the potential of new communication technologies for voice. Our findings highlight a disconnect between assumptions about technology present in humanitarian policies and the actual uses of technology by affected populations. The article traces the factors that facilitate, or hinder, participation and finds that communication technologies enable voice only if other parameters, such as a strong civil society, are present. Further, we observe that opportunities for voice are stratified, mapping onto existing social inequalities." (Abstract)
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"This article investigates the intersection of digital and social inequality in the context of disaster recovery. In doing so, the article responds to the optimism present in recent claims about “humanitarian technology” which refers to the empowering uses and applications of interactive technol
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ogies by disaster-affected people. Drawing on a long-term ethnography with affected communities recovering from Typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013 triggering a massive humanitarian response, the article offers a grounded assessment of the role of social media in disaster recovery. In particular, the article focuses on whether any positive consequences associated with digital media use are equally spread among better off and socially marginalized participants. The analysis reveals sharp digital inequalities which map onto existing social inequalities. While some of our already better-off participants have access to a rich media landscape which they are able to navigate often reaping significant benefits, low-income participants are trapped in a delayed recovery with diminished social media opportunities. The fact that some participants are using social media to recover at a rapid pace while others are languishing behind represents a deepening of social inequalities. In this sense, digital inequality can amplify social inequalities leading to a potential “second-order disaster.” This refers to humanly perpetuated disasters that can even surpass the effects of the natural disaster." (Abstract)
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"The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information'social media, satellite imagery and more is often referred to as Big Data. Making sense of this data deluge during disasters is proving an
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impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian." (Publisher description)
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"This article is a historical examination of the use of photography in the informational and fundraising strategies of humanitarian organizations. Drawing on archival research and recent scholarship, it shows that the figure of the dead or suffering child has been a centrepiece of humanitarian campa
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igns for over a century and suggests that in earlier eras too, such photos, under certain conditions, could “go viral” and achieve iconic status. Opening with last year’s photo campaign involving the case of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, whose body washed up on a Turkish beach near Bodrum in early September 2015, the article draws on select historical examples to explore continuities and ruptures in the narrative framing and emotional address of photos depicting dead or suffering children, and in the ethically and politically charged decisions by NGO actors and the media to publish and distribute such images. We propose that today, as in the past, the relationship between media and humanitarian NGOs remains symbiotic despite contemporary claims about the revolutionary role of new visual technologies and social media." (Abstract)
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"This article explores how the U.S. news media construct the topic of hunger in Africa for U.S. audiences. Specifically, the article addresses how newspapers define and delimit the relationship between U.S. citizens and foreign sufferers. Through a framing analysis and critical discourse analysis of
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randomly sampled newspaper stories, the author finds that while news articles covering hunger in the United States usually frame the problem as pertinent to the public sphere, the victim as worthy of political action, and the reader as political agent, articles covering hunger in Africa frame the issue as irrelevant to the public sphere, the victim as removed from political action, and the reader as politically impotent. Interviews with journalists are used to understand why discrepancies occur." (Abstract)
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"In August 2014 Internews launched Boda Boda Talk Talk (BBTT) in the Protection of Civilians site known as PoC 3 in Juba. PoC 3 is the newest site and is adjacent to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) UN House base that contains PoC 1 and PoC 2. BBTT is a professionally produced reco
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rded audio Humanitarian Information Service (HIS). In order to reflect the voices of the community, Internews recruited and trained community correspondents who themselves had been affected and displaced from their homes [...] A first wave (Wave 1) of surveying on information needs was conducted in August 2014 [...] Since Wave 1, the population in PoC 3 has grown radically [...] Wave 2, was conducted in January 2015 to further investigate the information needs in the area and ascertain the impact and benefit BBTT has provided individuals in UN House PoC 3. In total 319 interviews with individuals were collected." (Introduction)
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"This article aims at demonstrating the relevance of the concept of 'media witnessing' as an analytical lens for the study of audience engagement with media reports of distant suffering. Drawing upon existing theoretical work on the concept, the article approaches media witnessing as a distinct moda
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lity of audience experience and constructs an analytical framework for its study. Applying this framework on an empirical study of Greek audiences, the article provides a typology of witnessing, consisting of four different types of audience engagement with media stories of human suffering. This typology illustrates the complexities inherent in the practice of watching suffering on television, as well as the limitations of mediated cosmopolitan imagination." (Abstract)
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"In February 2015, Internews established Nile FM, a community radio station in Malakal County, Upper Nile state [South Sudan]. As part of Internews' Humanitarian Information Service (HIS) that brings information to displaced and vulnerable populations throughout the country, Nile FM responds to the
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information needs of the internally displaced people (IDPs) in the region." (Introduction)
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"This article explores the role that nongovernmental organizations play in the changing landscape of international news. Drawing on archival analysis and 65 interviews with nongovernmental organization professionals, it examines the resource commitments and values guiding research at leading humanit
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arian and human rights nongovernmental organizations. It finds that staff size, country coverage, and reporting capacity have increased substantially over time and now rival the resources found in major news organizations. Interviews reveal that nongovernmental organization work is guided by values of accuracy, pluralism, advocacy, and timeliness. These values overlap with and sometimes extend commonly held journalistic values, but they are not reducible to them. Findings suggest that nongovernmental organizations provide important ‘boots on the ground’ coverage of international affairs, even as their imbrication with journalistic practices raises important normative questions for nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and news audiences." (Abstract)
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