INTRODUCTION There is little doubt that the media has a profound impact on our awareness of humanitarian emergencies and disaster relief around the world. The reality of these disasters, and our responses to them, are heavily influenced by the framework that the media uses – through exposure on television, radio and in print – to capture our attention. The media has a number of important responsibilities during a natural disaster. I have broken down their responsibilities into four stages: early warning, immediate response, post-disaster review, and implementation. While these phases do not necessarily occur one after the other without overlap, they form a good basis from which to explain the different roles of the media throughout the disaster relief effort. First and foremost, in what I like to call the “early warning” phase, the media serves as a link between disaster response units and authorities, with victims of an impending disaster. Their role here is to alert victims of an impending disaster and distribute disaster response advice. After the disaster hits, the next phase is “immediate response”. The media’s primary focus here is to help victims of the disaster. The immediate response phase has two stages: crisis point, where the victims need immediate access to basic essentials; and the rebuilding phase, where victims have their basic needs met but there is ongoing need for donations – more generally in terms of goods and services – to assist victims rebuild their lives. By reporting on stories with dramatic and emotive coverage, the media links local and international NGOs to the public and compels them to donate. In the “post disaster review” phase, the media focus moves away from aid, and takes a more eva... ... middle of paper ... ...plementation of new procedures and policies surrounding disaster awareness and response plans. The media works with NGOs to generate donations and help the victims. It promoted debates around what went wrong, and how to improve next time. Moreover, it puts pressure on the authorities to implement these changes to ensure a decrease in risk for any future disasters. It is true to say that without the media, the success of disaster management would not be possible. When the media, government authorities, technology suppliers, UN agencies, international and national NGOs and local communities work closely together, to inform and educate the public with accurate information, then early warning systems, disaster prevention methods and relief programs will be much more cohesive. Therefore, the role of the media in humanitarian emergencies and disaster relief is paramount.
Credibility: I choose to speak about the Red Cross, because they offer relief to people at times when they own almost nothing. I have never personally experienced any of their relief services, but according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 357 natural triggered disasters were registered in 2012. This shows that there is a great need for
Royer, Jordan. “Hurricane Sandy and the importance of being FEMA”, Crosscut.com, Crosscut.com, Web. 1 Nov 2012, 3 May 2014.
The media has critical impact in Sontag 's article. She demonstrates her argument when she states, “Parked in front of the little screens-television, computer, palmtop- we can surf to images and brief reports of disasters throughout the world” (437). Individuals regularly decide to overlook pictures of others anguish. People decide to envision that others don 't suffer, and would rather keep on living in ignorance of other third-world nations.
News of the devastating hurricane Katrina and its economic, political, social, and humanitarian consequences dominated global headlines in an unprecedented manner when this natural catastrophe struck the region of New Orleans in mid August 2005 (Katrinacoverage.com). As a tradition, large-scale disasters like Katrina, inevitably, bring out a combination of the best and the worst news media instincts. As such, during the height of Hurricane Katrina’s rage, many journalists for once located their gag reflex and refused to swallow shallow and misleading excuses and explanations from public officials. Nevertheless, the media’s eagerness to report thinly substantiated rumors may have played a key role in bringing about cultural wreckage that may take the American society years to clean up.
Kim, Susan. Disaster News Network Best way to help? 14 August 2004. Web. 2 April 2014.
Claire B. Rubin’s second edition Emergency Management: The American Experience 1900-2010 is a wide ranging book that effectively breaks down over 100 years of America’s emergency response history. In the book, Rubin uses an array of previous emergencies and details local, state, and federal response efforts. In doing so, Rubin effectively portrays the ways in which the Federal Government has played an ever increasing role in emergency response. As Rubin states early in the book, the current mechanisms The United States has in place for emergency response and management have come into existence after many lessons learned from ineffectual response efforts in the past. These disasters, referred to as “focusing events” (p. 4), and they have
Pre impact conditions mixed with event specific conditions combined with one another during a disaster produce physical and social impacts to a community. The impact from each disaster can be reduced by interventions through emergency management. By assessing these pre impact conditions, an emergency manager can produce social risks and vulnerabilities within their community. Integrating these social risks and vulnerabilities emergency mangers can use the four most important phases in emergency management: preparedness, planning, response, and recovery to benefit their community as a whole.
Information is perhaps one of the most crucial elements in regards to disaster preparedness. Resultantly, it is vital that individuals understand what information is relevant to the local area and how to obtain information in the event of a disaster or emergency. Furthermore, it is essential that individuals stay informed prior to, during, and after a disaster. Described below are some of the key elements to consider in regards to being and staying informed:
There is no question that when a natural, man-made or zombie disaster strikes, it is important to be prepared. However, the challenge for CDC was how to engage an audience in this seemingly lifeless –literally– and uninteresting information. The purpose of this case study is to (1) track CDC’s disaster preparedness zombie apocalypse campaign through relevant media outlets, (2) examine the key messag...
The Canadian Red Cross is proud to support humanitarian effort around the globe. Each year, more than 200 million people are effected by disasters and emergencies, and Canadian humanitarian actors continue to provide life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable people around the world. The Canadian Red Cross is one of many humanitarian organizations making contributions to health in emergencies. No single country can bear the burden of a humanitarian crisis alone. Collaboration and coordination is crucial to continue to respond effectively to the needs at the source of humanitarian crises. The humanitarian impacts of disaster, conflict, and health emergencies are extraordinary and require a collaborative, coordinated approach involving countries,
Howitt, A. M., & Leonard, H. B. (2006). Katrina and the core challenges of disaster response. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 30:1 winter 2006.
This paper will discuss the dynamics of the American Red Cross case and how it affected the ability to provide adequate emergency response to catastrophic events. Over 10 years, the American Red Cross has been implementing strategies to ensure that the organization is better equipped when dealing with disasters. Not only has the American Red Cross has been faced with so much negativity, the organization is fighting very hard to change the concepts of how the organization can rebound from such criticism.
Social work interventions in disasters have focused on the variety of ways that such events affect individuals, families, organizations and communities. Areas of concern have included traumatic stress, resources for disadvantaged and vulnerable populations and co-ordination of various intervention systems (Zakour, 1996).
Before modern mass media was at hand, giant news events could not be made known to the public until long after they occurred. The media has always made disasters and wars the large news stories. These have always been the prime news events for the last few decades. And with the development of television and other technologies the ability to show the public what is going on became easier and easier. Now that mass media was available the public could almost immediately view or read about disasters and wars. Average Americans could now sit in their living rooms and watch what was happening in the Vietnam War. They witnessed the explosion of the space shuttle challenger. They saw the scared teenagers run from Columbine. Perhaps the most stunning of all the events that mass media brought into our homes was the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City. Mass media has grown so much in such a short period of time and society is having trouble dealing with it. Some question if the public needs to see such terrible things on television. Some wonder if the media truthfully portray the events. Media today is so large and it conceivably could be damaging to our society. If we take a look at past events, and the recent September 11th tragedy, we can critique the media's handling of them. To become more media literate we need to understand how events such as disasters and war have been handled in the past.
Researchers have noticed for as long as the media system dependency theory has been studied that, what people hear, see, and read inflicts an experience on the consumer. It affects their thoughts about the information they have just taken in and allows for judgments to be formed as well as a relationship to the media source itself (Loges & Ball-Rokeach, 1993). We have decided on a qualitative design that will allow us to understand more in depth implications media places on society when devastation hits a country. As a group of researchers we are going to base our research off the exploratory descriptive research. This will allow us to pick and choose which we feel is the best way to attain information we need from media consumers about the event...