"¿Cómo contar el desastre y mostrarlo, sin horrorizar a la comunidad ni ocultarle información? ¿Cómo conservar la objetividad, cuando la cronista o el movilero deben convivir con la desgracia? ¿Qué criterios se deberían seguir para hacer un buen uso de las redes sociales y no dejarse llevar
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por mitos y rumores? Esta publicación sistematiza paso a paso cómo llevar a cabo una de las coberturas más complejas en el periodismo, a partir de los conocimientos de una profesional y docente con treinta años de experiencia en informar desde el lugar del desastre." (www.eudeba.com.ar)
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"Digital technologies and big data are rapidly transforming humanitarian crisis response and changing the traditional roles and powers of its actors. This article looks at a particular aspect of this transformation—the appearance of digital volunteer networks—and explores their potential to act
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as a new source for media coverage, in addition to their already established role as emergency response supporters. I argue that digital humanitarians can offer a unique combination of speed and safe access, while escaping some of the traditional constraints of the aid-media relationship and exceeding the conventional conceptualizations of citizen journalism. Journalists can find both challenges and opportunities in the environment where multiple crisis actors are assuming some of the media roles. The article draws on interviews with humanitarian organizations, journalists, and digital volunteer networks about their understanding of digital humanitarian communication and its significance for media coverage of crises." (Abstract)
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"Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews with journalists and aid agency press officers, participant observations at the Guardian, BBC and Save the Children UK, as well as the ordinary people who created the words and pictures that framed these disasters, this book reveals how humanitarian disa
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sters are covered in the 21st century – and the potential consequences for those who posted a tweet, a video or photo, without ever realising how far it would go." (Publisher description)
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"In this moment of unprecedented humanitarian crises, the representations of global disasters are increasingly common media themes around the world. The Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action explores the interconnections between media, old and new, and the humanitarian challenges that
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have come to define the twenty-first century. Contributors, including media professionals and experts in humanitarian affairs, grapple with what kinds of media language, discourse, terms, and campaigns can offer enough context and background knowledge to nurture informed global citizens. Case studies of media practices, content analysis and evaluation of media coverage, and representations of humanitarian emergencies and affairs offer further insight into the ways in which strategic communications are designed and implemented in field of humanitarian action." (Publisher description)
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"The book develops the analytics of grievability as an analytical framework that unpacks the ways in which news about death constructs grievable death and articulates relational ties between spectators and sufferers. The book employs the analytics of grievability in a comparative manner and analyses
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the coverage of three different case studies (terror attack, war and natural disaster) by two transnational news networks (BBC World News and Al-Jazeera English). This comparative analysis showcases the centrality of news media in selectively cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan solidarity in a global age." (Publisher description)
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"Heather Bourbeau finds that in a crisis, media professionals and humanitarian aid providers negotiate a delicate balance between thorough and consistent coverage, and coverage that sensationalizes a crisis and leads to hysteria, misery, and fatigue. In "F" Bourbeau compares the media coverage of th
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e Ebola crisis in Liberia to reporting on the Second Congo War in the DRC. She finds that when the topic is a contagious disease outbreak, media themes can swing the international community into action, but can also create unnecessary fear in countries far from the affected areas. By contrast, ongoing conflicts such as the war in the DRC often become background noise relegated to the back pages of major newspapers, if covered at all by the international press. She concludes that without continued media interest and informed coverage the international community's response becomes dulled or muted and atrocities can be overlooked despite a continuous need for assistance and diplomatic efforts." (Introduction to part 4, page 186)
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"Andersen explores the definition of humanitarian communication, its history, language, visual renderings, and narrative structures. Building on the historical effects of media depictions and their relationship to aid appeals and public response, the chapter engages the concepts of empathy and compa
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ssion, post-humanitarianism, the formulation of an ironic spectator, the contentious notion of compassion fatigue, the ethics of solidarity, and the articulation of global citizenship. She discusses the challenges that complex emergencies and human suffering pose to journalists, media organizations, and aid agencies, and addresses the media pitfalls and dominant critiques of crisis representation. From early-published photographs of starving children, to contemporary aid appeals for Syrian Refugees, issues of stereotypes and narrative exclusions are understood along a trajectory of historical development and context." (Introduction to part 1, page 10)
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"When we hear stories of distant humanitarian crises, we often feel sympathy for victims, but may stop short of taking action to help. Past research indicates that media portrayals of distant suffering can promote helping behavior by eliciting sympathy, while those that prompt a more rational respon
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se tend to decrease helping behavior by undermining sympathy. The authors used an online experiment to test whether certain media frames could promote helping behavior through a more rational, rather than emotional, pathway. The study tested whether framing distant suffering as either solvable or unsolvable might promote helping behavior if a rational evaluation of a crisis leads one to determine that help is efficacious in solving the problem. Survey respondents were randomly assigned to read one of three messages: a high solvability message, a low solvability message, or a control message. Contrary to expectations, both low solvability and high solvability conditions increased participants’ intentions to help. The results suggest that this is because framing problems as unsolvable drives up sympathy, thus promoting willingness to help, while framing problems as solvable drives up perceived efficacy, also promoting willingness to help. The authors conclude that, in contrast to earlier studies, and to the assumptions of many of those working in media, emphasizing rationality can promote helping behavior if audiences rationally interpret the problem as solvable." (Abstract)
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"In recent years, authorities have banned the use of drones for journalism in many countries. Therefore, it is valid to claim that practicing drone journalism often leads to questions of freedom of the press, the right to receive ideas and information, and also the freedom of expression. Clearly, th
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e best opportunities for developing drone journalism are in those countries that respect human rights, freedom of the press, and the right to obtain information. There are certainly a great many countries that bear little or no such respect, and also those where legal scholarship, as well as initial practical cases on this subject, are still developing. The ethical codes are also still under construction. The basics of journalism ethics are, indeed, very valid when practicing drone journalism. In addition, the discussion of drone journalism ethics has so far mainly focused on safety and privacy issues, with more analysis needed of the ways in which background information and context can be included by reporters using drones." (Conclusion)
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"This article examines how three Chinese and two British newspapers sourced content from social media in their coverage of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the 2013 Ya'an Earthquake, and the 2015 Tianjin Explosion. The media outlets citing of social media content present different patterns in line with
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their political and commercial interests, ideologies, and journalistic values. Diverse images of the three disasters as revealed on social media (social media reality) were constructed in the newspapers' coverage. Journalists gate-keep information from social media and dissolve it into daily disaster reporting, accepting selected aspects of social media reality but rejecting others. Especially in the case of the Chinese newspapers, meeting the needs of domestic political and commercial interest groups, journalists endorse social media content that is favorable to these groups." (Abstract)
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"Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century is the first book in over twenty years to examine the international media’s coverage of sub-Saharan Africa. It brings together leading researchers and prominent journalists to explore representation of the continent, and the production of that image, esp
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ecially by international news media. The book highlights factors that have transformed the global media system, changing whose perspectives are told and the forms of media that empower new voices. Case studies consider questions such as: how has new media changed whose views are represented? Does Chinese or diaspora media offer alternative perspectives for viewing the continent? How do foreign correspondents interact with their audiences in a social media age? What is the contemporary role of charity groups and PR firms in shaping news content? They also examine how recent high profile events and issues been covered by the international media, from the Ebola crisis, and Boko Haram to debates surrounding the "Africa Rising" narrative and neo-imperialism. The book makes a substantial contribution by moving the academic discussion beyond the traditional critiques of journalistic stereotyping, Afro-pessimism, and ‘darkest Africa’ news coverage. It explores the news outlets, international power dynamics, and technologies that shape and reshape the contemporary image of Africa and Africans in journalism and global culture." (Publisher description)
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"Suzanne Franks discusses how the visually dominated storytelling of famines in Africa distorted the causes of famine and therefore obscured the most effective solutions. As journalists struggled to document the depths of human suffering, humanitarian communication in these early stages raised compa
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ssion, concern, and actions of all sorts, but also helped to extend the conflicts and misled global publics by offering simple explanations for complex circumstances. In addition, it left in its wake a legacy, and a visual convention of stereotypic imagery, of The Starving African; anonymous, vulnerable, powerless, and forever waiting for food from the West." (Introduction to part 4, page 186)
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"This article examines the diverse factors shaping the involvement of non-governmental organisation (NGO) with humanitarian photography, paying particular attention to cooperative relationships with photojournalists intended to facilitate the generation of visual coverage of crises otherwise margina
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lised, or ignored altogether, in mainstream news media. The analysis is primarily based on a case study drawing upon 26 semi-structured interviews with NGO personnel (International Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, Oxfam and Save the Children) and photojournalists conducted over 2014-2016, securing original insights into the epistemic terms upon which NGOs have sought to produce, frame and distribute imagery from recurrently disregarded crisis zones. In this way, the article pinpoints how the uses of digital imagery being negotiated by NGOs elucidate the changing, stratified geopolitics of visibility demarcating the visual boundaries of newsworthiness." (Abstract)
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"Media diaries of 36 Chilean adults were being collected as two disasters unfolded: an earthquake on the northern coast and 11 days later a massive fire in Valparaiso. From an audience reception theoretical approach, these events provide a unique opportunity to compare people's engagement with media
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and responses to two mediated disasters. By complementing textual and computerized linguistic analyses, this study reveals that audiences' responses differ by type of disaster and proximity. Where earthquakes abound, people express more rational analyses of media quake coverage and more emotional responses to the fire. Also, proximity played an expected role with the fire but not the quake, suggesting that audiences' engagement with media events depends on the context and the type of disaster." (Abstract)
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"Most analysis of media coverage of disaster has a normative edge. This paper outlines a philosophical basis for establishing normative standards for news coverage of natural hazards and human-based risk. It begins with a top-down, or system-oriented, epistemological approach to disasters and risk.
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By employing this epistemology, a new professional standard of excellence, the journalist as mitigation watchdog, emerges. Focusing on mitigation promotes narratives that acknowledge the shadow of the future and report on human emergent cooperative behavior. Both are linked to human flourishing through Nussbaum's theory of capabilities. The goal is to provide a framework that specifies how professional performance might be improved and explains why some news reports are exemplary and others deserve professional censure." (Abstract)
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"Eyewitness user-generated content has dominated the study of citizen journalism in crisis and conflict zones. However, the convergence of online networked technologies, like social media, collaborative mapping and real-time information management, gives ordinary people the capacity to commit acts o
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f journalism from afar. Networks of virtual volunteers act as digital humanitarians who rapidly assemble situational awareness at the onset of natural and human-caused disasters through crowdsourcing, data analysis and crisis mapping to aid on-the-ground emergency response. While they have been studied through the multi-disciplinary lens of information science, computation, geography and emergency management, digital humanitarians have received little attention in the journalism literature. This exploratory study contends that the knowledge-based content produced by these groups is citizen journalism akin to data-driven investigative news. Two case studies and a cross-case analysis consider this argument through digital humanitarian work of the Standby Task Force on the 2015 European refugee crisis and the 2016 earthquake in Ecuador. These and other emerging crisis/conflict zone examples suggest a broader perspective is needed on citizen journalism not bounded by eyewitness user-generated content. Future research directions to explore digital humanitarianism as a form of citizen journalism are also offered." (Abstract)
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"This study examines media coverage of the 2011–2012 famine in Somalia by the websites of BBC News, CNN and Al-Jazeera. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analyses, it explores why coverage of the famine began as late as it did, despite ample evidence of its inevitable unf
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olding, as well as the manner in which the famine was explained in popular news accounts. The study surveys famine-related news reports for evidence of four paradigms present in the current literature on famine and its causes, through which the famine could have been understood: as a Malthusian competition between population and land; as a failure of food entitlements; as critical political event; and as an issue of criminality. The findings include an overwhelming reliance on Malthusian explanations of famine, and noticeable under-reporting of the famine – despite ample evidence – until it was formally declared as such by the United Nations." (Abstract)
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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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