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:
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.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.
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 interventio...