It is widely recognised that disasters are becoming more frequent, having greater and longer-lasting impacts and increasingly affecting those most vulnerable (Watson, Caravani, Mitchel, Kellet, & Peters, 2015). Climate-related and geophysical hazards—earthquakes, flooding and wildfires in particular—affect millions of people worldwide each year (Guhpa-Sapir, 2018). Disasters are also the consequence of human action or inaction, the failure of people to mitigate and respond to risks that arise from new technology, conflict and lack of governance, amongst others.

While those tasked with managing and responding to disasters, emphasise their event-driven nature and have sought to address hazards to reduce communities’ exposure to disaster risks, there is now a greater recognition that disasters need to be defined and understood in broader terms, encompassing vulnerabilities that develop over time or persist due to structural conditions and inequalities for example. Poverty, environmental degradation, forced migration and conflict all contribute to insecurity (Beck, 2009). These insecurities can intersect with or aggravate the effects of sudden-impact events. Disasters can therefore be more accurately conceptualised as complex, systemic failures (see Cottle, 2014).

With media and journalism integral to representations of and public communication about disasters, this book considers their role in the context of these new understandings of disaster. It adopts a unique approach by centring its analytical focus on what we term disaster communities, namely communities that are at risk from, affected by and recovering from the adverse impacts of disaster and their drivers and exploring their diverse relationships with media and journalism. The research, case studies and perspectives introduced in this collection consider how media and journalism produced by and for such disaster communities may offer alternative perspectives to national media, give voice to those vulnerable to hazards or seeking to rebuild after disaster, and also support risk reduction and recovery processes.

Disasters and Their Drivers

Disasters are very rarely solely related to sudden-onset events. Instead, their causes are complex, deep-seated and intersect with other vulnerabilities that create insecurity, most significantly environmental degradation and climate change, poverty, urbanisation and conflict (Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015). While there is a diversity of research across different disciplines, academic enquiry has tended to focus on disaster events and their acute impacts. Studies of media and journalism have generally followed this pattern (Ploughman, 1995), with greater scholarly attention paid to how media cover disaster and enable disaster communication (see Veil, 2012). The role of media in supporting risk reduction, enabling communities to identify and address the antecedent conditions that contribute to insecurity and intersect with disaster recovery processes are less well understood.

It is the emphasis on ‘extreme events’, often the calamitous (once in a generation) natural disasters that result in significant loss of life, that become known and made visible through international media coverage (Cottle, 2014), which has limited the scope of disaster research. Some scholars, therefore, identify a need for greater theoretical diversity in this body of research and for disaster studies to link to the related fields of sociology of risk and environmental sociology as well as to consider the key sociological concerns of inequality, diversity and social change (Tierney, 2007).

As indicated, a consensus has emerged in recent years that the frequency, impact and scale of disaster are increasing. The climate crisis is fuelling more powerful storms and prolonging periods of drought. Environmental degradation and the destruction of ecosystems, such as floodplains and forests, remove natural barriers that protect communities from hazards. Urbanisation is increasing the number of people exposed to natural hazards (Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2016). Such hazards in the context of other conditions, threats and vulnerabilities that create or contribute to human insecurity, the most significant drivers being persistent poverty, food insecurity, forced migration, crime, conflict and violations or political and human rights, have changed and expanded understandings of disaster, their causes and impacts. Consequently, in policy and practice there has been a subtle shift away from disaster management towards disaster risk reduction, recognising the need to address underlying drivers of disaster. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015, p. 10), implemented in 2015, illustrates this approach by calling for:

more dedicated action focused on tackling underlying disaster risk drivers, such as the consequences of poverty and inequality, climate change and variability, unplanned and rapid urbanization, poor land management and compounding factors such as demographic change, weak institutional arrangements, non-risk-informed policies, lack of regulation and incentives for private disaster risk reduction investment, complex supply chains, limited availability of technology, unsustainable uses of natural resources, declining ecosystems, pandemics and epidemics.

These broader, multilayered approaches to understanding and defining disaster and their drivers have led to contemporary theorisations of disaster moving away from low probability yet high-impact processes to consider the accumulation and intersection of hazards, risks and vulnerabilities.

One approach that has been adopted in recent years is the concept of cascading disasters, which considers the interactions between compounding vulnerabilities and different events (Pescaroli, Nones, Galbusera, & Alexander, 2018). A cascading disaster may be initiated by a trigger event, either natural or anthropogenic, which then intersects with other hazards to exacerbate the impacts of this event and create or aggravate other vulnerabilities (Pescaroli & Alexander, 2015). With many vulnerabilities arising from increasing interdependence between systems, whether these are interactions between climatic, food and energy systems for example (Helbing, 2013), it is complexity and these interconnections that result in adverse outcomes.

The 2011 Japan disaster is often cited as an example of a cascading sequence of hazards and vulnerabilities. The primary trigger was an undersea earthquake off Japan’s northeast coast, which generated a series of tsunami waves. In turn, the tsunami damaged cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant and led to the release of radioactive material. It was the interactions between natural and technological hazards, therefore, that escalated the disaster and its impacts. Fears about widespread radioactive contamination, the extent of damage to Japan’s infrastructure and its significance as a manufacturing base meant that its repercussions were not limited to the Asia Pacific region.

A cascading disaster is not simply a causative sequence of events and is more accurately described as a non-linear process that is context dependent. Therefore, a flood may result in loss of life, but the impact of flooding that occurs in a region or country where there is a greater reliance on subsistence farming and with weak housing and healthcare infrastructure, for example, would be magnified by the lack of economic and structural resilience. This amplification may create further adverse effects, such as triggering population movements or exacerbating intergroup tensions, which in turn may contribute to further secondary disasters, such as identity-based violence, conflict or other critical emergencies (Pescaroli & Alexander, 2015).

Other theorisations emphasise a broader paradigm, suggesting that a more appropriate focus for research are crises, as the ‘exogenous and endogenous factors’ that create disruption (Boin, 2005, p. 165). This perspective argues for a broader typology of disaster drivers to encourage interdisciplinary and multilevel approaches to analyse the causes of complex crises. It also recognises that adverse effects may return or create further unintended consequences even when a crisis has supposedly been resolved.

Quarantelli (2006, p. 9) describes newly emerging disasters that ‘jump or cut across social systems’ as trans-social-system ruptures (TSSRs). These ruptures are a consequence of globalisation processes and their effects are geographically dispersed. They are the major global crises, such as pandemics, transitional terrorism and climate change, that have widespread repercussions and require international and transnational solutions. These types of disasters are according to Cottle (2014, p. 4) ‘endemic to, deeply enmeshed within and potentially encompassing in today’s world disorder’. He argues that the contemporary media ecology and global communication flows have become increasingly important in how these global crises become signified, understood and responded to. Their visibility, how they are presented to audiences and global movements of public opinion are shaped by the dynamics of media and communication.

It is the recognition that disasters are a product of a range of complex hazards, risks and vulnerabilities that informs the selection of case studies and research that are brought together in this book. It includes examples that demonstrate the characteristics of traditional or older disasters as significant disruptive events (Quarantelli, 2006) but also introduces those that are shaped by development inequalities, arise from policy failures or intersect with other systemic risks, including climate change, environmental degradation, conflict and violence, amongst other hazards and vulnerabilities.

Despite these evolving understandings and their common characteristics, both disasters and crises are social constructions. What is defined or labelled as a disaster reflects values, interests and perspectives and encourages particular forms of intervention. Many events and drivers of disaster that result in adverse impacts, with significant loss of life and widespread destruction, fail to register for international media. News values, the proximity and relevance or emergencies to audiences and their potential to dislocate the interests of elite nations render some ‘disasters’ and emerging crises invisible (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Joye, 2010). Social construction processes are also shaped by media treatment of events and how risks and vulnerabilities are reported. Tierney (2007, p. 62) notes that in covering disasters media ‘both reflect and reinforce broader societal and cultural trends, socially constructed metanarratives, and hegemonic discourse practices that support the status quo and the interests of elites’. This, she argues, was evident in the way the US media constructed post-Katrina New Orleans as lawless and violent, which drew upon stereotypical portrayals of America’s impoverished communities and also reflected long-standing political discourses and policy positions that promote a greater role for the military in disaster management.

Alternatively, it can also be argued that adopting the term ‘disaster’ to describe slow-moving and chronic vulnerabilities, drivers for disaster that may not have yet reached the acute stage, serves to call attention to a problem that may not be recognised or understood as such. The rhetorical dimension of identifying a hazard, risk or vulnerability, or indeed their potential to emerge, and their intersection with others as a ‘disaster’ may encourage responses that attempt to address or alleviate these drivers of adverse impacts for communities. There is, however, a danger that disaster becomes a catch-all term and by encompassing a range of disruptions, hazards and risks will lead to a loss of analytical precision. Yet, as it has been argued, there is a recognition in contemporary theorisations that disaster should be redefined to reflect the accumulation and intersection of hazards, risks and vulnerabilities that lead to adverse effects.

Media, Journalism and Disaster Communities acknowledges these broader understandings of disaster. Alongside the well-established natural and anthropogenic hazards that create disaster vulnerabilities, this book also presents research and case studies that call attention to other drivers for disaster. Importantly, as is elaborated on further below, it seeks to emphasise community perspectives towards disaster. Ultimately, the definition and understandings of disaster and their effects, ontologically, is located in the different notions of community and how these communities may view and understand disaster and their effects.

Defining Disaster Communities

Community is a broad concept that is used to describe groups of people with social connections and/or shared commonality, for example through some form of shared identity, religion and customs or values, typically in a defined geographical locality and a shared sense of belonging. Geographic specificity contributes to the boundary definition of communities, through shared places such as towns and neighbourhoods, though community can also be used in connection with the expression of national or international identities. As such, communities vary significantly in scale—both in terms of their population and in terms of their physical distribution. Globalisation has contributed to a shift in how we view communities, away from the need for physical colocation in order to form community ties to the formation of diaspora communities and online communities. Physicality is also not necessarily fixed, with nomadic communities exercising mobility as part of their core identity, and refugees or migrants often retaining a sense of belonging both to their place of origin and to each other despite displacement.

Indeed, for the purpose of this book, we embrace broad and multifaceted understandings of communities—from towns and villages to regions or states within a nation, from fixed geographical location to displaced peoples, from physical colocation to online connectivity, from kinship to professional or religious ties—and recognise that individuals may belong to a number of such communities at different levels at any one point.

The purpose of community is often seen as a way of uniting groups of people, and that such unity reduces suffering through solidarity, collective endeavour and shared purpose. Members of communities strive for wellbeing and shared emotional wellbeing (Davidson & Cotler, 1989; MacMillan & Chavis, 1986). Disasters disrupt the fabric of communities, regardless of their size, and necessarily trigger a response from its members to protect, address vulnerabilities and restore normalcy of its existence. Irrespective of their causes, disasters, Bruhn (2011, p. 112) argues, “have common effects—they produce trauma that changes the social and emotional lives of the individuals, the resiliency of families, and the cultural fabric of families.” In so doing, they can also give rise to new communities that are defined by people, for example survivors of or displaced by a disaster, crisis or conflict.

Defining disaster communities solely based on those residing in a geographic area physically damaged or disrupted by disaster is also limiting because those affected may expand beyond this, which we refer to as secondary communities of concern. That is, the impact on family or friends living in other locations, people living close to affected areas who experience increased anxiety and fear as a consequence of perceived risk or those that have fostered connections to those communities directly affected by disaster. Here we concur with Kirschenbaum’s (2004, p. 98) assertion that a disaster community has “a specific geographic disaster epicentre but is perceived and experienced through a complex web of social networks”. Kirschenbaum argues “the foundation of a disaster community depends on a core of social networks connecting those directly or indirectly affected by a disaster” (Ibid.). This conceptualisation of disaster communities acknowledges that there are a number of “social networks operating simultaneously from the epicentre of a potential (or actual) disaster area” (Kirschenbaum, 2004, p. 100). Components of a disaster community according to Kirschenbaum are defined as family network, micro-neighbourhood network, and macro-community network. Whilst these provide focal points for understanding levels of preparedness, they do not consider professional networks beyond emergency services. That is, the role of local or community media in developing community identity to raise awareness of risks and vulnerabilities, their role in providing disaster warnings for example, and their contribution to rebuilding community ties and social relations post-disaster. In this book, we argue not just for a more expansive definition of disaster communities to include such communicative dynamics, but contend that the dynamics and composition of disaster communities cannot be understood in isolation from the epistemology of mediated interrelations.

When we define disaster communities as a concept, we draw on how the response to disaster helps solidify the sense of community and its boundaries—be that as a community at risk from, impacted by, or recovering from disaster. Moreover, spontaneous connections arise as a response to disasters, for example from emergency service response, non-governmental organisation (NGO) and volunteer networks and through coverage by national and international news media. These create new points of connection for both social and mediated ties within disaster communities. Social and mediated ties, as understood in our conceptualisation of disaster communities, have a greater degree of permanency and provide both boundary definitions and identity for these communities. This is partly because such ties have pre-existing connections, and because the communities have a shared experience or purpose through their exposure to vulnerabilities, as survivors or in recovery. The different connections and their proximity, strength and temporality for disaster communities are illustrated by Fig. 1.1.

Fig. 1.1
figure 1

Model of disaster communities

Full size image

Due to the way we conceptualise disaster communities, this book has a particular emphasis on local media and journalism, which as part of the social and civic fabric of their communities are able to raise awareness of disaster drivers to provide information to support communities to mitigate risk and prepare for disaster (Blanchard-Boehm, 1998). When communication infrastructures are disrupted, such as may follow a significant ‘natural disaster’, often it is only local media—for example community radio—that are able to meet communities’ information needs, providing access to vital emergency information (Kanayama, 2007). Later, beyond the immediate impacts, local media and journalism are able to support communities as they seek to adapt to and recover from disaster, for instance by advocating on their behalf and raising awareness of the issues of post-disaster recovery (Matthews, 2017; Usher, 2009). This is reflected in the close working relationships humanitarian agencies seek to develop with local media, where there is a recognition of the importance of capacity-building to support local media in recovering communities.

Media, Journalism and Disaster Communities also recognises how, in the context of disasters and disaster communication, the media environment is evolving, with digital media facilitating greater public participation in journalism and information provision, offering new opportunities to serve audiences, those that may coalesce around particular interests, and enhancing the breadth of media and journalism accessible to these audiences. The aggregation of social media data is now integral to disaster planning, used to warn people about hazards and support emergency response (Crowe, 2012). Following disasters, people may use online platforms to create their own blogs and websites bypassing traditional gatekeepers to communicate the realities of the post-disaster situation in their communities (Farinosi & Treré, 2014). Other forms of ‘hyperlocal journalism’, by providing information or news for a small, defined community, are able to raise awareness of hazards that have not yet come to the attention of mainstream media. New media are also changing the dynamics of humanitarian communications, allowing direct connections between affected communities and humanitarian agencies and facilitating the emergence of networks of digital volunteers that are able to support emergency response and assist in rescue and relief efforts (Chernobrov, 2018).

By defining disaster communities in a new and more expansive way, and also including local and community media as important ties, it provides greater analytical precision to the communicative dynamics and social interconnections that emerge from hazards, vulnerabilities and risks that drive disaster. This definition also draws attention to an often-neglected area of research—the role of local and community media in relation to disasters—which serves as a bridge to media research that has largely considered the processes of mediation at a national and international level, sociological research that has focused more on social ties than those attributed to mediation, and disaster management research that has emphasised risk reduction, preparedness of national agencies and information provision in emergencies.

Overview of Chapters

To expand and elucidate the concept of disaster community and its intersections with media and journalism, the book presents 15 chapters. They coalesce around the different characteristics and points of connection of disaster communities outlined above and together address the following key questions guiding this edited collection: What are the different forms of media and journalism produced by and for communities at risk from, affected by and recovering from disaster? To what extent do they recognise and speak to the different notions of community that emerge in disaster contexts? How may news and media content be received and acted upon by these communities? Moreover, to consider to what extent media and journalism may help enhance our understanding of the breadth of hazards, risks and drivers of vulnerability? Within the context of the complex and globalised nature of such disaster, what contribution can community approaches make to addressing these vulnerabilities?

The book is divided into three parts that reflect different types of hazards and drivers of disaster that may have adverse impacts on communities. Part I, Environmental Destruction and Geophysical Hazards, introduces five chapters that emerge from the vulnerabilities and consequences for disaster communities arising from environmental destruction and geophysical hazards. Our opening chapter by Paola Prado and Juliet Pinto, evaluates how local and national media covered the collapse of the tailings dam at the Samarco mine and the subsequent contamination of the Doce River basin in Minas Gerais, Brazil. This mining disaster further underlined the risks for communities in proximity to these metal and ore mines and their wider environmental impacts. By comparing reporting in the Estado de Minas, a newspaper published in Minas Gerais state, and Folha de São Paulo, a national daily title, they consider how local media defined the disaster, articulated community agency, vulnerability and resiliency. They argue that as demand increases for energy and mineral resources in Latin America, it’s vital that communities receive news that goes beyond official narratives and offers in-depth community-orientated discussions that are able to foster resilience. The significance of this disaster risk for communities was sadly brought into focus again in January 2019 following the collapse of another Vale tailings dam at Córrego do Feijão in Minas Gerais that left more than 200 people dead.

Chindu Sreedharan and Einar Thorsen centre their analysis on journalists as a professional community and consider how reporters negotiate their professional and personal responsibilities when they are affected by disaster. By analysing the experiences of journalists in Nepal after the earthquake of April 2015, they argue that journalists’ dual status created a clash between their personal and professional selves that had to be constantly negotiated in part as a consequence of obligations to their overlapping afno manche kinships/networks. Moreover, these difficulties also influenced their reportage, and engendered a strong interventionist commitment to their communities and what they could do for those in need, and also their perceptions of disaster journalism and expectations of what is required to help rebuild post-disaster societies.

In a similar vein, Jamie Matthews explains how after significant disasters secondary, interest-based communities may emerge. This is illustrated through the evaluation of two grassroot media initiatives that were launched after the 2011 Japan tsunami that sought to share news and information in English about recovering communities in Miyagi prefecture. These two projects, he argues, while also seeking to support recovery and reconstruction highlight the ongoing post-disaster issues in Tōhoku, and more specifically those experienced by people living in the cities of Ishinomaki and Kesennuma, are also able to meet the information needs of a broader community of concern, one that is geographically dispersed but shares a connection to those directly affected by disaster.

Jacqui Ewart’s chapter documents research that has assessed the role of the news media in Australia when covering disasters. By considering the different natural hazards and their intersection that drive disasters in Australia, and specifically by discussing examples of recent droughts, Ewart identifies the valuable information that local and community news media are able to provide to help communities deal with disaster. This is despite the fact that organisations engaged in disaster management are increasingly turning to social media to distribute information about these disaster risks.

The challenges posed by climate-induced migration, a systemic risk that cuts across territories, for island communities is the focus for Anna Roosvall, Matthew Tegelberg and Florencia Enghel’s chapter. Their analysis introduces three US islands, Sarichef Island in Alaska, Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, and Puerto Rico, as cases that, while of contrasting geographical size, share similarities and differences in their degrees of poverty, the rights of indigenous populations and political representation. They explore how imminent climate migration from these islands is understood in local and transnational reporting, arguing that different issues are brought to the fore in both. Transnational journalism, illustrated by articles carried by the Guardian , tends to reflect global perspectives, which are significant to recognise how climate change serves as a driver for migration. Local journalism, however, places greater emphasis on the needs of affected communities and connections with other issues, such as infrastructure and political processes. Both, they conclude, are necessary to gain a complete picture of climate migration and its impacts on vulnerable communities.

Part II brings into focus four case studies that coalesce around the theme of Armed Conflict and Journalistic Freedoms. Significantly, how persistent low-intensity conflict, the challenges of post-conflict recovery and restrictions on journalistic freedoms contribute to insecurity for disaster communities. It begins with a chapter by Mathew Charles which evaluates how El Faro, an online news portal, has been able to challenge the dominant narrative of urban violence in El-Salvador by incorporating the voices of gang members into their coverage. His analysis shows that including the perspectives provided by perpetrators of violence enables a deeper understanding of the violence and its underlying causes, which can help to repair the social bonds in communities that have been broken by gang violence.

The conflict and its impacts on communities in the Donbas region of Ukraine is introduced in Dariya Orlova’s chapter. She presents a study of Donbas residents’ news consumption, identifying their frustrations with and distrust in mainstream media coverage of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. She argues that conflict-affected communities did not consider local media as a reliable source for information and that their coverage contributed to the frustration, resentment and disconnectedness they felt. Instead, local and community groups on social networks were found to offer an alternative to local news media and were considered more effective in meeting communities’ information needs.

The characteristics of local news coverage of the farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria are explored in Confidence Uwazurike’s chapter. Through a longitudinal analysis of coverage in Idoma Voice, a local newspaper that caters for a community disrupted by the conflict, he identifies how reporting has tended to emphasise the violent aspects of the conflict due to its impact on and relevance to its readership. The consequence of rendering such frames is that they fail to promote alternative strategies and encourage non-violent solutions to the conflict. This, he suggests, offers a case for developing a model of peace journalism that is particular to local and community media.

Aida Al-Kaisy examines developments in Mosul following its liberation from Islamic State in 2017 and the role of different local media, specifically radio and online, in post-conflict reconciliation. She writes that post-conflict recovery for Mosul is limited by the political, social and economic conditions that persist and this is reflected in how media operate within this landscape.

Our third and final part, Human (In)action and Humanitarian Crises, presents four chapters that introduce examples of disaster and their drivers that result from human (in)action, including governance and policy failures, or are a consequence of or have evolved to become humanitarian crises, specifically communities that are displaced or fleeing persecution. Kurt Barling focuses on the Grenfell Tower fire that occurred in Kensington, London, in 2017. He explores how local journalism failed to report on Grenfell before the blaze, ignoring the publicised concerns of the community, in particular those raised by the Grenfell resident’s association about fire safety in tower blocks that followed a similar fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, South London, in 2009. In this sense, he argues, Grenfell was a disaster foretold.

Kyle J. Holody compares national and community newspapers coverage of the mass shooting that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. He demonstrates that community newspapers were far more likely to cover the individual, community and regional ramifications of the shootings than national newspapers, which focused much more on the societal/international aspects of the shootings. This, Holody, argues, combined with the greater amount of coverage they afforded to the event and its impacts, suggests that community newspapers are able to keep attention on this issue after national media have moved on to other stories.

The refugee community in Greece provides the focus for Victoria Jack’s chapter. She evaluates a humanitarian information project, News that Moves, which sought to enhance refugees’ access to reliable information that would help them navigate legal procedures and access assistance. Jack’s analysis identifies how the News that Moves website and then later Facebook page became an important and trusted source for refugees as they travelled from Greece and through the Balkan route into Western Europe. She also acknowledges how the political sensitives and security concerns may impinge on the ability of such initiatives to meet communities’ information needs, which ultimately may reduce refugees’ perception of them as a trusted information source.

Lisa Brooten examines the role of social media, Facebook in particular, in the violence perpetrated towards the Rohingya community in Myanmar. Through interviews conducted with members of civil society organisations in Myanmar, she considers how these organisations were able to raise concerns about Facebook and the spread of hate speech and incitement of violence towards the Rohingya. Brooten argues that in authoritarian contexts such as Myanmar, it is vital for companies such as Facebook to work closely with local partners to identify problematic actors that seek to create community division and to support communities to expand their options for communication, including developing alternative platforms to Facebook.

The book concludes with an afterword by Mervi Pantti that draws together the central themes of the book to elucidate our understanding of disaster communities and the integral role of local and community media within these.

We hope that the case studies, research and perspectives presented in this book provide an eclectic overview of how different forms of media and journalism contribute to our understanding of the lived experiences of communities at risk from, affected by and recovering from disaster. In so doing, these contributions illustrate the utility of disaster communities as an analytical concept for future research and, crucially, the importance of stepping beyond national or international news media to consider media and journalism produced by and for disaster communities.