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Disasters & Humanitarian Crises

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AI and natural disaster analysis: Needs analysis during disaster using Artificial Intelligence by Citibeats, February 2018 - September 2021

Citibeats; UNESCO (2024), 21 pp.

"The main conclusions drawn from the analysis of online opinions during natural disasters in Africa are highlighted below: ● Climate change is one of the main concerns of the African population in recent years. This climate problem is considered to be causing more and greater natural disasters on ... more

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The Identity Work of Journalists and Humanitarians in South Sudan’s Protection of Civilians Sites

Rebecca Sutton, Richard Stupart

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, volume 18, issue 1 (2024), pp. 81-98

"This article interrogates the simplistic juxtaposition of protectors and protected in South Sudan’s Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites, by asking: who was civilian in South Sudan, and how were civilians being protected? We present a civilian landscape that is much broader and more complex than t ... more

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Communication, community engagement and accountability in Sudan’s regional response. Outcomes of the high-level meeting to discuss elevating collective CCEA in the regional Sudan conflict response

London: CDAC Network (2024), 4 pp.

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Kenya Media Landscape Guide

London: CDAC Network; Deutsche Welle DW Akademie (2024), 31 pp.

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Breaking the Silence: The 10 Most Under-Reported Humanitarian Crises of 2023

London: Care International (2024), 26 pp.

"For the second year in a row, all ten of the most under-reported crises are in Africa. From conflict in Angola to climate change in Zimbabwe, every entry in this report represents countless human tragedies taking place in the shadows of the world’s gaze. Our second most under-reported crisis coun ... more

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How to spot harmful information in crises

London: CDAC Network (2024), 2 pp.

"In times of emergency, finding reliable information online can be challenging. This guide offers practical advice to help you identify trustworthy information and avoid misinformation. By asking the right questions and using the tools provided, you can make informed decisions even during a crisis." ... more

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Disaster Management: The Standards Perspective

ITU-WMO-UNEP Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management

Geneva: ITU (2024), viii, 14 pp.

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Mapping humanitarian tech: Exposing protection gaps in digital transformation programmes

Giulio Coppi

Access Now (2024), 69 pp.

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Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience
Deep Insights

Lisa Bradley, Emma Heywood (eds.)

New York et al.: Peter Lang (2024), xviii, 257 pp.

"Journalists have often been considered the "fourth emergency service". They are first on the scene, alongside paramedics, fi re and police, running towards danger rather than away, and providing independent, veritable and crucial information in the public interest. And yet, unlike frontline workers ... more

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Spreading Like Wildfire: The Securitization of the Amazon Rainforest Fires on Twitter

Natalia Umansky

International Journal of Communication, volume 18 (2024), pp. 91-111

"As a tool of political communication and information diffusion, social media has transformed the process of securitization, allowing (in)security messages to spread and scale up rapidly. Focusing on the case of the Amazon rainforest fires in 2019, this article seeks to answer two questions: How doe ... more

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Pathways for strengthening community feedback and complaints approaches in Papua New Guinea

London: CDAC Network (2024), 5 pp.

"Acknowledging the contextual challenges in Papua New Guinea, CDAC recommends the following actions to UNDP and other response organisations to strengthen approaches to two-way communication with communities in disaster response activities. 1. Utilise the newly established Community of Practice for ... more

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Aid and the news agenda: Examining the forces shaping NGO-produced humanitarian media

Michael Sunderland

Bournemouth University, Doctoral Thesis (2024), 268 pp.

"This study examines the external influences that shape NGO-produced news content concerning humanitarian crises in East, West and Central Africa. Employing a thematic analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with humanitarian communicators and a content analysis of the humanitarian press rel ... eases of four major NGOs, it seeks to establish the types of content NGO communications staff consider most effective for achieving mainstream media coverage, how they access such content, and any forces influencing their eventual production of news. In line with notions of media logic (Altheide and Snow 1979; Cottle and Nolan 2007) and news cloning (Fenton 2010), it uncovers a reliance on hard-hitting humanitarian statistics and powerful first-person testimonies, which are considered essential for achieving news coverage. Statistics are found to be most often sourced from publicly available humanitarian datasets, often managed by the United Nations, and are considered susceptible to politicisation by authorities implicated in certain crises. First-person testimonies are usually gathered in-person by NGO staff and are affected by issues of physical access to crisis zones including monitoring by local authorities and demands for media sign-off. Additionally, a humanitarian NGO’s decision on whether to speak out publicly about a crisis is found to be often weighed up against threats to staff and programme safety. Examining these issues through a lens of agenda building theory (Cobb and Elder 1971), this study introduces the concept of agenda erosion, describing the phenomenon by which powerful actors, including host authorities and western governmental and intergovernmental donors, exert influence to undermine agenda building activities by NGOs in the context of humanitarian crises. Methods of agenda erosion might include demanding sign-off of media content, the control of physical access to crisis zones for communications staff, and the politicisation of humanitarian data. Unlike the traditional view of NGOs being producers of information subsidies (Gandy 1982), this concept recognises that, as news producers, NGOs also accept information subsidies, including humanitarian data, from other actors. These subsidies are used by NGOs to increase their own agenda building effectiveness but can also allow other, potentially conflicting, priorities to influence the media agenda too. NGOs are now widely regarded as important players in the production of international news (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Cooper, 2011; Powers 2018) and these findings suggest agenda erosion is in-part responsible for the continuing adherence of aid organisations to established patterns of news construction (Cottle & Nolan 2007; Fenton 2010; Waisbord 2011; Powers 2018). Only crises with hard-hitting data or emotive personal stories are likely to achieve mainstream media coverage but exposure to such sources is often closely guarded by the most powerful actors in certain crises. As a result, some crises continue to go underreported and NGOs risk being silenced or, worse, used as proxy mouthpieces by powers implicated in the humanitarian context to which they are attempting to respond." (Abstract) more

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The State of Open Humanitarian Data 2024: Marking Ten Years of the Humanitarian Data Exchange

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (2024), 33 pp.

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Recommendations for strengthening communication and community engagement in the Libya floods response

London: CDAC Network (2024), 7 pp.

"This bulletin summarises the key findings and recommendations for strengthening collective efforts on communication and community engagement in the Libya floods response. The findings are drawn from a qualitative consultation with more than 30 representatives from the humanitarian community conduct ... more

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Digital transformation and early warning systems for saving lives: Background paper

Vanessa Gray, Amélie Grangeat

Geneva: ITU (2023), iv, 36 pp.

"The objective of this paper is to highlight the importance of early warning dissemination and communication, one of the four pillars of multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS), which ITU is leading with the newly defined executive action plan for the Early Warnings for All initiative. The key ob ... more

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Morocco earthquake: Immediate communication and engagement priorities. Key messages for responders

London: CDAC Network (2023), 6 pp.

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Information Ecosystem Preparedness for Health Emergency Response: What Can We Do to Communicate Better in the Next Crisis

Rocio Lopez Inigo, Alejandro Posada Bermudez, Nancy Wong

Internews; USAID (2023), 37 pp.

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Natural Language Processing for Humanitarian Action: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Path Toward Humanitarian NLP

Roberta Rocca, Nicolo Tamagnone, Selim Fekih, Ximena Contla, Navid Rekabsaz

Frontiers in Big Data, volume 6 (2023), 14 pp.

"Natural language processing (NLP) is a rapidly evolving field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing methods to process and generate language at scale. Modern NLP tools have the potential to support humanitarian action a ... more

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The Türkiye–Syria earthquake response six months on: Lessons on communication, community engagement and accountability

London: CDAC Network (2023), 9 pp.

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Elevating communication and engagement in Sudan’s growing humanitarian crisis: Priority actions for decision-makers and practitioners

London: CDAC Network (2023), 6 pp.

Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience Deep Insights

Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service: Trauma and Resilience
Deep Insights