Summary: This is a two-page paper on Communication and Media.

The paper has 3

sources and is in MLA format. The paper discusses how do media accounts shape our
understanding of and responses to disasters.
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How Do Media Accounts Shape Our Understanding of and Responses to Disasters

Introduction:

Print and Electronic media have proved to be an important and effective tool in

providing the latest information to the people. Modern media has also shown its ability in

shaping the thinking and opinions of the general public. This essay will discuss the ability

of media accounts in shaping peoples understandings of and responses to disasters.

Media Framing of Disasters:

Media has shown its great ability in drawing attention of the public towards

different calamities and disasters occurring in different parts of the world. Despites it’s

this great ability has media actually played its role in framing the disasters in its original

context? This argument should be assessed with great caution. The accounts of media of

any man made disasters depend on the information provided by the experts, spokesmen

of the corporation involved and government officials. It often ignores the voices of the

victims, their families and the communities of the affected neighborhoods. This results in

a one sided picture of what happened and who is responsible for all this human suffering.

A good example of this is the Woburn contamination of water case. The disaster involved

two of the largest corporations of the United States. The case was reframed by Jonathan

Harr in his best selling book “A Civil Action” and later Disney’s Touchstone Pictures

made it into a successful movie. The community of Woburn found both the book and the

movie marginalizing their involvement and activities against the corporations involved in

water contamination. This exclusion of the voices of the disaster victims and their

families and has collapsed the full understanding of the disaster. (Button, 143-158)
 On the media has been unable to persuade the authorities to take early actions

during different human disasters which would have saved thousands of innocent lives.

The so called CNN effect has never played a central role in this regard but rather a

supportive one. There are other factors like foreign and domestic policies geo-political

interests which plays pivotal role in persuading the authorities. The drought in Southern

Africa in the early 90s is a clear example of this. In the United States the USAID

missions around the world has played more important role in convincing the U.S.

government to take humanitarian relief actions rather than the media. Despite all the

media reporting United States does not acted in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Bosnia. Thus

media does not have the central role in persuading responses again disasters. (Natsios,

124-139)

The disaster imaging before the 1980s has been accused of being under the

colonialist motivation representing starving African children. The images of helpless and

passive victims and heroic saviors were the major part of the African calamities portrayed

by different NGOs and relief agencies calling for charities. Still misrepresenting the

African image is the major problem in the electronic media where the editors do not

adhere to any guidelines as presented by Oxfam and other relief agencies. The main

reason of the exaggerated perception in the West about the third world poverty is this

misrepresentation by the media itself. Channels often show what they are fed without

balancing the picture thus portraying a gruesome picture of the third world countries

where human suffering is as prominent as human prosperity in the West. (Benthal, 173-

216)

Conclusion:
 The overall assessment about the media depicts that it has the power to give us

understanding about the events and disasters taken place all over the globe, if its account

became more explicit about the local sources also, not depending on the official and

corporate explanation of what happened and why happened. But it is quite clear that

media is not the central power in pushing the authorities towards the action.
 Works Cited

Benthal, Jonathan, “Images and Narratives of Disaster Relief” Disaster, Relief and

Media, 1993, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London.

Button, Gregory V. “Popular Media Reframing of Man Made Disasters” Catastrophe and

Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster” 2001, School of American

Research Press.

Natsios, Andrew S. “Humanitarian Relief in Complex Emergencies” U.S. Foreign Policy

and the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, 1997, The Center for Strategic

and International Studies.