"In this phase of our research on charity advertising, we aimed to examine how INGOs represent distant others in direct mail communications compared to newspaper advertisements, building on findings from earlier studies. While the direct mail format offers greater potential for nuanced storytelling,
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our analysis reveals both continuity and emerging shifts in the dynamics of charity advertising, underscoring the complexities of this medium.
Positive developments include an increased attribution of images to their creators, a practice that will gain significance as AI-generated content becomes more common. Additionally, the decline in pitiful imagery in direct mail compared to newspaper advertisements signals progress toward more ethical representation. These trends highlight incremental yet noteworthy changes in visual storytelling.
However, the continued overrepresentation of Africa across direct mail and newspaper advertisements raises critical questions about the motivations and strategies driving charity communications. This trend suggests a potential disconnect between visual narratives and operational realities, warranting deeper scholarly exploration. Similarly, the persistent focus on health as the dominant subject matter—often at the expense
of narratives on education, economic infrastructure, or capacity-building—highlights the emphasis on short-term relief over long-term development.
Thus, while there is evidence of progress, charities must strive to balance their visual narratives against operational realities. The necessary shifts highlighted will require significant overhaul at strategic levels but are vital not only for fostering a more informed and engaged donor public but also for advancing ethical and equitable representations of development and the Majority World." (Conclusion, page 22)
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"Aid organizations, activists, and the media often use graphic depictions of human suffering to elicit sympathy and aid. While effective, critics have condemned these practices as exploitative, objectifying, and deceptive, ultimately labeling them ‘poverty porn.’ This paper examines people's eth
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ical judgments of portrayals of poverty and the criticisms surrounding them, focusing on the context of charity advertising. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that tactics that have been decried as deceptive (i.e., using an actor or staging a photograph) are judged to be less acceptable than those that have been decried as exploitative and objectifying (i.e., depicting an aid recipient's worst moments). This pattern occurs both when evaluating the tactics themselves (Studies 1a-1c) and when directly evaluating critics' arguments about them (Study 2). Studies 3 and 4 unpack the objection to deceptive tactics and find that participants' chief concern is not about manipulating the audience's responses or about distorting perceptions of reality. Participants report less concern about non-deceptive manipulation (using emotion to compel donations) and ‘cherry-picked’ portrayals of poverty (an ad showing an extreme, but real image) so long as there is some truth to the portrayal. Yet they are more sensitive to artificial images (e.g., an actor posing as poor), even when the image resembles reality. Thus, ethical judgments hinge more on whether poverty portrayals are genuine than whether they are representative. This work represents the first empirical investigation into ethical judgments of poverty portrayals. In doing so, this work sheds light on how people make sense of morally questionable tactics that are used to promote social welfare and deepens our understanding of reactions to deception." (Abstract)
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"Die kenianische, auch mit deutschem Geld produzierte Serie "Country Queen"läuft auf Arte und weltweit auf Netflix. Sie ist raffiniert erzählt - und ein Glücksfall für das globale Lagerfeuer." (Einleitung)
"As the production, content, and display of humanitarian images faced the requirements of digital media, humanitarian organizations struggled to keep equitable visual practices. Media specialists reflect on past and current uses of images in four Canadian agencies: the Canadian Red Cross, the Multic
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ultural Council of Saskatchewan, the World University Service of Canada, and IMPACT. Historically, the risk to reproduce the global inequalities they seek to remedy has compelled photographers, filmmakers and publicists in these agencies to develop codes of visual practice. In these conversations, they have shared the insights gained in transforming their work to accompany the rise of new digital technologies and social media. From one agency to the other, the lines of concern and of innovation converge. On the technical side, the officers speak of the advantage of telling personal stories, and of using short videos and infographics. On the organizational side, they have updated ways to develop skills in media production and visual literacy among workers, volunteers, partners, and recipients, at all levels of their activity. These interviews further reveal that Communications Officers share with historians a wish to collect, preserve, and tell past histories that acknowledge the role of all actors in the humanitarian sphere, as well as an immediate need to manage the abundance of visual documents with respect and method. To face these challenges, the five interviewees rely on democratic traditions of image-making: the trusted relationships, both with the Canadian public and with local peoples abroad, which have always informed the production and the content of visual assets. For this reason, humanitarian publicists might be in a privileged position to intervene in larger and urgent debates over the moral economy of the circulation of digital images in a globalized public space." (Abstract)
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"Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important mechanism of organizational accountability to meet stakeholders’ diverse interests and needs. However, research has yet to systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of organizations’ STC to
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advance a more comprehensive understanding of how organizations manage accountability demands in the digital era. To address this gap, this study proposes a conceptual framework to explain how organizations’ STC on social media (SM) is shaped by STC via non-SM channels and their external communication capacity and the resulting STC outcomes in the SM domain. Survey data from 156 humanitarian relief and development organizations on four continents showed that using non-SM channels to engage various groups of stakeholders helped build organizations’ external communication capacity, which in turn helped improve their engagement in STC on SM. STC on SM further contributed to organizations’ success in information dissemination, community building, and action mobilization outcomes on SM." (Abstract)
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"Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, the predecessors of NGOs—pressure groups—tried to advance their cause by cultivating close relations with the mainstream press, and/or publishing their own periodicals. But from the late 20th century onward, many NGOs started routinely producing their
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own news content, including written text but also photojournalism, video, and sophisticated interactive projects. Some of this material is disseminated through “alternative” outlets, social media and activist hubs. But it is difficult for NGOs to gain a mass audience in these ways, so most major NGOs recruit or commission experienced journalists to carry out this work for them. Much of the research in this area has focused on either journalists’ increased dependence on NGOs, or on the restructuring of NGOs’ resources, priorities and working cultures in accordance with news norms. Most scholars have also focused on the work of international aid agencies and/or human rights organizations, as well as particular kinds of crises, such as famines, hurricanes and conflicts. The extant literature is heavily weighted toward organizations which are based in North America or Europe. However, a small but growing number of scholars are challenging this, exploring the news work of other NGOs and/or news outlets, in other countries, and during other kinds of news-making periods, including conferences, summits and “quiet” news weeks." (Summary)
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"International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have long been recognised as major contributors to the construction of Africa's image in the West through their impact stories, fundraising and advocacy campaigns. Yet although there has been considerable academic inquiry into these messages, res
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earch focusing on the editorial processes that produce them is still limited. Moreover, the few studies that exist tend to focus on the finished products as seen at the INGOs' Western headquarters. This is particularly curious, given that most of these stories originate from the INGOs' fields of operation in the Global South and are initially collected, written and edited by communication staff in national offices. This paper explores the various editorial power centres in the INGO story production process from the perspectives of global South staff. Based on data collected from five INGOs operating in East Africa, the paper draws three key conclusions: that INGO editorial processes are dynamic, contested and heterogeneous, field office staff possess underappreciated agency in the story editing process, and the extent to which INGOs can be said to speak on behalf of those they claim to help is in part linked to the amount of agency that communication staffers in the global South possess." (Abstract)
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"International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are com
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bined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision-makers. Development communication studies have tended to focus primarily on interventions aimed at doing good among recipients, at the expense of examining the extent to which promotion and reputation management are elements of those practices. This book establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation." (Publisher description)
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"Across the board, respondents called for NGOs to diversify their strategies. As well as children, they wanted to see images of parents and grandparents, local development workers and doctors, for example. They highlighted the importance of maintaining the dignity of the individuals portrayed, espec
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ially when depicting children and called for more sharing of stories to give those presented in images identity and agency. Respondents also talked about where they would draw the line, and many agreed that images of nudity and violence should not be used. It was also clear that some images that are used by INGOs to get a specific message across – for example the image of an older African man drinking beer – may get lost in translation when viewed by a person in a completely different context." (Conclusions)
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"Das berüchtigte Bild des hungernden, nackten, ungeschützten Kindes ist ein Leitmotiv in der humanitären Hilfe, das bis heute kollektive und individuelle Vorstellungswelten im Globalen Norden formt. Die Bilderwelten, die die Krisen im Globalen Süden porträtieren, sind geprägt von einer kolonia
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len Kontinuität. Die Körper von Schwarzen Menschen und Menschen of Color werden in passiven, leidenden, abhängigen Positionen gezeigt und auf diese reduziert. Die Darstellungen sind allerdings nur die 'Spitze des Eisbergs': Die Bilder drücken im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes plakativ ein Verhältnis von Machtungleichheit aus, das nicht nur die Spendenwerbung, sondern auch die Strukturen von Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und vielen anderen Bereichen prägt. Aus unterschiedlichen Positionen, Gruppen und Organisationen kamen Anstöße zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit Spendenwerbung und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit von Hilfsorganisationen. Beispielsweise haben ISD und glokal in den letzten Jahren ein vielfältiges Programm aus Workshops, öffentlichen Interventionen und Projekten wie den Dokumentarfilm white charity (whitecharity.de) entwickelt, um einen Prozess der Sensibilisierung und des Verlernens anzustoßen. Hier stand jedoch erstens Kritik im Vordergrund, zweitens blieb die Diskussion eher szene-intern auf entwicklungspolitische Akteur_innen beschränkt. Mit dem Projekt (De-)koloniale Bilderwelten wollten wir einen Schritt weitergehen, indem wir die Künstler_innen Rajkamal Kahlon, Isaiah Lopaz und Lena Ziyal dazu eingeladen haben, alternative Werbeplakate zu entwerfen. Diese wurden auf Plakatwänden an zentralen Plätzen im öffentlichen Raum Berlins gezeigt. Außer den künstlerischen Beiträgen dieses Projekts versammelt die Publikation zudem die Stimmen und Gegenentwürfe von Aktivist_innen, Wissenschaftler_innen und Künstler_innen." (Vorwort)
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"Debates about the visual representations of global poverty have been going on for many years, yet the experiences and views of those featured have been notably absent. 'The People in the Pictures' addresses that gap. Save the Children commissioned research in the UK, Jordan, Bangladesh and Niger, t
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o listen to and learn from those who contribute their images and stories, as well as members of their communities. The research explored: what motivated people to agree to Save the Children filming or photographing them or their children; how people experienced and perceived the image-making process; how people felt about their portrayal in the resulting Save the Children communications. The research highlighted many areas of good practice, as well as some concerns and challenges. It has resulted in a set of recommendations to embed greater agency and accountability for contributors into Save the Children’s image making." (Back cover)
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"Narrative is essential for public engagement with global poverty. Stand Up Planet, a documentary about global development, was produced to evaluate the effects of a little-utilized nonfiction comedy narrative. Using a pretest–posttest experimental design, this study examines shifts in U.S. audien
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ce engagement with global poverty after watching Stand Up Planet, compared with a somber documentary, The End Game. Both documentaries increased awareness of global poverty, support for government aid, knowledge, and intended actions. However, Stand Up Planet produced significantly larger gains in awareness, knowledge, and actions; these effects were mediated by the narrative’s relatability, positive emotions, and entertainment value. The End Game’s effects were mediated by narrative transportation and negative emotions. Implications for narrative in social change campaigns are discussed." (Abstract)
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"Development institutions communicate about development through mediated communication strategies. The advent of image-intensive digital spaces such as Instagram has facilitated communication for these institutions, making ‘development’ more accessible to the public. However, the representation
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of development in these institutional digital spaces remains largely unexamined. By conceptualising Instagram as an emerging context for the ‘public face of development’, we conducted a content analysis of 300 Instagram posts by three major bilateral development agencies (USAID, DFID, and SIDA) in order to address critical questions concerning how they communicated about development agendas, subjects, and processes of development to the public. The study reveals that these representations of development in digital space largely adhere to feminised and infantilised visions of ‘ideal victimhood’ when projecting ‘what’ and ‘who’ should receive attention. These representations thus served to justify the Western-centred, neoliberal modes of development. Overall, these agencies’ communicative patterns regarding ‘how development can be achieved’ articulate perspectives on development to ‘look-good’ at home and ‘do-good’ abroad that make social change seem readily achievable." (Abstract)
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"This article critically examines Unicef’s campaign in Slovenia, aimed at helping children in Ruanda, which caused huge public support in terms of the raised finances and visibility, but it also provoked a serious opposition from African people living in Slovenia and some academics. The article in
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vestigates the role of negative stereotypical consequences of such African images. The method of our research was a detailed visual analysis of the campaign including profound interviews with different parties that gave us their point of view. The campaign was financially very successful, especially because of the big media coverage. The marketing company had no ethical hesitations in designing this campaign, although they received some hindrances from the Slovenian African Centre. The main goal was to raise as much money as possible to help these children, but helping in this way has never enabled Africa to develop into an independent continent. One article, which may present a true image of a certain area, is not problematic, but a continuous representation of only one image can lead to stereotypes that trigger discrimination. The Slovenian public received a confused, muddled and incomplete picture of Africa, because the images were taken out of context and portray the whole continent as helpless and in need of the ‘West’ to prosper. The used images consolidate the status quo of the European superiority. Overall, that kind of analysis can provide useful insights into some of the strategies for a more positive image of Africa in the future." (Abstract)
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"Discussion of the visual politics of solidarity, in relation specifically to the representation of suffering and development, has been grounded in analysis of images. This paper seeks to expand this debate by exploring the organizational politics that shape and are shaped by these images. The paper
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is inspired by production studies in the cultural industries and draws on interviews with 17 professionals from 10 UK-based international development and humanitarian organizations, who are engaged in planning and producing imagery of international development and humanitarian issues. It discusses how power relations, tensions, and position-taking shape the arguments and choices made by NGOs producing images of suffering and development. I focus on two arenas of struggle about how to visualize solidarity: (a) intra-organizational politics - specifically tensions within NGOs between fundraising and/or marketing departments, and communications, campaign and/or advocacy departments, and (2) inter-organizational politics: the competing tendencies towards convergence, cohesiveness, and collective identity of the humanitarian sector, and competition, distinction, and divergence between organizations on the other. I show that NGOs' visual production is an area of conflict, negotiation and compromise, and argue for the crucial need for attention to organizational politics in the production of visual representations of distant suffering in order to uncover diverse and competing motivations, and the forces driving current humanitarian and development communications." (Abstract)
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"‘Killer facts’ are those punchy, memorable, headline-grabbing statistics that make reports special. They cut through the technicalities to fire people up about changing the world. They are picked up and repeated endlessly by the media and politicians. They are known as ‘killer’ facts becaus
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e if they are really effective, they ‘kill off’ the opposition’s arguments. The right killer fact can have more impact than the whole of a well-researched report."
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"Our intention in producing Success and Learning Stories is to provide readers with a document that helps them respond to Food for Peace’s (FFP’s) original request for short stories as part of their regular reporting requirements. The module provides brief guidance on how to write good impact st
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ories that will address the needs of a number of audiences, including FFP. Underlying the module is a desire to improve the learning associated with the human impact of project implementation." (Preface)
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