"National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articula
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ting and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national ‘solidarity lite’ while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it." (Abstract)
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"This chapter focuses on one of the key areas within the field of humanitarian communication, namely the symbolic construction of distant suffering in image, text and sound. In particular, the chapter examines humanitarian communication produced by humanitarian non-government organizations (NGOs) fo
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r raising awareness, mobilizing public and government agendas for humanitarian action, securing support and legitimacy for their operations and raising funds from the public and major donors. The discussion reviews two central approaches to the study of humanitarian communication: the ethical promise of representation, which focuses on analysis of humanitarian messages and humanitarian communication as a practice, looking at NGOs’ production and audiences’ reception of humanitarian communications. It is argued that humanitarian communication can be best understood by combining these approaches and highlighting their tensions as inherent to humanitarianism itself." (Abstract)
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"Drawing on an original UK-wide study of public responses to humanitarian issues and how NGOs communicate them, this timely book provides the first evidence-based psychosocial account of how and why people respond or not to messages about distant suffering. The book highlights what NGOs seek to achi
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eve in their communications and explores how their approach and hopes match or not what the public want, think and feel about distant suffering." (Publisher description)
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"Based on analysis of 17 in-depth interviews with professionals in 10 UK-based international NGOs engaged in planning, designing and producing humanitarian communications, this article explores how intimacy figures in NGOs' thinking about and practice of humanitarian communication. Drawing on discus
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sions of 'intimacy at a distance' and the 'intimization' of the mediated public sphere, the analysis explores three metaphors of intimacy used by interviewees to articulate the relationships they seek to develop with and between their beneficiaries and UK audiences: (1) sitting together underneath a tree; (2) being there; and (3) going on a journey. The article situates the governance of intimacy of practitioners' thinking and practice as NGOs' attempt to respond to criticisms from the humanitarian and international development sector, policymakers and scholars. It concludes by calling for a revisiting of the centrality of intimacy in humanitarian communication and the logic of emotional capitalism within which it is embedded, outlining its implications for both academic scholarship and practice." (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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"Virtual Methods offers a detailed exploration of the problems and opportunities surrounding Internet-based research. Can offline and online observations be combined? Are online interviews able to produce high quality data? How does a researcher sort through the vast mass of material available? From
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hyperlink analysis to the sex industry online, case studies sensitively highlight the difficulties researchers face, point out the opportunities to be seized, and offer practical solutions. Virtual Methods provides concrete advice for all stages of the research process." (Publisher description)
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