Colleagues may be interested in the latest title in the Global
Crises and the Media Series:
Disasters and the Media
by Pantti, Mervi / Wahl-Jorgensen,
Karin / Cottle, Simon
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford,
Wien, 2012. XII, 235 pp. Global Crises and the Media. Vol. 7 General Editor:
Simon Cottle, Print:ISBN
978-1-4331-0825-9 pb. SFR 35.00 / €* 28.20 / €** 29.00 / € 26.40 / £ 24.00 /
US$ 36.95
This book offers unique insights into how
news media today make disasters culturally meaningful and politically
important, drawing on cutting-edge theoretical work and recent examples. It
looks at how globalisation is affecting the meanings of disaster but also
considers the continued relevance of nations and their citizens as interpretive
frameworks. It examines how journalists' witnessing of disasters is changing in
response to new technologies, including social media, and how the ideal of
objectivity might be challenged by new, more emotional and more compassionate
forms of story-telling premised on an injunction to care. Ultimately, the book
calls attention to the media possibilities for addressing disasters as global
social, political, cultural and economic events in which we all have a stake.