Stijn Joye

News discourses on distant suffering: a Critical Discourse Analysis of the 2003 SARS outbreak

News carries a unique signifying power, a power to represent events in particular ways (Fairclough, 1995). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis and Chouliaraki’s theory on the mediation of suffering (2006), this article explores the news representation of the 2003 global SARS outbreak. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS. By looking into the mediation of four selected discursive moments, underlying discourses of power, hierarchy and compassion were unraveled. The analysis further identified the key role of proximity in international news reporting and supports the claim that Western news media mainly reproduce a Euro-American centered world order. This article argues that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperity, danger and safety.

The hierarchy of global suffering

Abstract: In 2007 nearly 17,000 people died because of natural disasters and more than 211 million others were directly affected. News media play a basic role in giving publicity to these numerous instances of global suffering as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international crises. Drawing upon theories on distant suffering (cf. Boltanski 1999), this study investigates the mediated representation of international crises, with a focus on natural disasters occurring in Australia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the USA. Applying critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992; Chouliaraki 2006), this article explores how discourses of hierarchy and inequality are realised in news texts about distant suffering. The cases of analysis are nine news items that were broadcast on a public and a commercial Belgian television channel on 2 January 2006. The comparative analysis of these news texts reveals glaring differences that reflect global hierarchies of place and human life. Suffering in the West (USA and Australia) was portrayed as comprehensible and close to the spectator, who could identify with the distant sufferers as if they are like us. While being of a greater magnitude, the Indonesian disaster was in contrast presented as no cause for concern or action, which blocked the engagement with the distant sufferers who were portrayed as ‘Others’, with a capital ‘o’. Pakistan sufferers were also articulated as distant others, but close-ups of gazing children urged the spectator to care for them and potentially act on the represented misfortune. In general, the critical discourse analysis supports the claim that Western news media reproduce a certain kind of global hierarchy, mainly a Euro-American-centred world order, and that news discourse normalises inequalities. This article argues that mediated representations of international crises reflect and consolidate the power relations and divisions that characterise our contemporary world.

The X-factor of charity: a critical analysis of celebrities' involvement in the 2010 Flemish and Dutch Haiti relief shows

In our contemporary mediatized societies, philanthropy seems to be part of celebrities’ ontology, while celebrities have become indispensable for the charity industry. This has provoked both negative and positive appraisals, although the specific nature and consequences of celebrities’ involvement remain unclear. This article contributes to these debates by providing a systematic analysis of the roles celebrities play in telethons, which we redefine as charity media events, allowing us to study the shows in their full contextual complexity as ideological constructs. Applying qualitative content analysis, we have analysed two charity media events following the 2010 Haitian earthquake. In general, four distinct roles have been discerned: celebrities add an aura of exclusiveness and glamour, they render distant suffering relevant to domestic audiences, they function as principal motivators, and also contribute to the commodification of charity. Celebrities’ involvement thus reinforces charity media events’ dominant discourse of charitainment, in which a disaster is portrayed as a short term problem that can be remedied by supporting relief aid. Although this analysis does not disregard the usefulness and impact of fundraising campaigns and the contribution celebrities can make, it criticizes the oversimplified representation of complex issues and the decontextualized and depoliticized interpretations of distant suffering.

Civil society organizations at the gates? A gatekeeping study of news making efforts by NGOs and government institutions

This article applies a combination of an input–output content analysis and in-depth interviews with nongovernmental organization (NGO) communication professionals to determine whether the growing incorporation of press releases in editorial print content could be a new public forum through which international political actors, such as NGOs, could gain wider news access by serving as emerging key players in global civil society. The study indicates that Belgian news coverage of international aid issues is more often based on NGO press releases than government press releases. We also found that the agenda-building capacities of NGOs and government institutions are enhanced as journalists present information subsidies as original journalistic work in most cases. Nonetheless, we must tone down prevailing one-sided conclusions, as most press releases are not just copy-pasted. Instead, most are supplemented with additional sources and information. The data, moreover, identify different journalistic roles of NGOs according to their objectives. While some issue press releases to raise short-term public awareness and donations for humanitarian crises (mobilization), others have developed into established expert news source organizations that provide background information and reliable eyewitness accounts to journalists.

Domesticating distant suffering: How can news media discursively invite the audience to care?

Several scholars have identified an important emotional role in news media’s covering of international disasters; inviting the audience to care for people in need who are not like us. This article addresses the question of how news media can attribute a local sense of relevance to global suffering by focusing on the journalistic practice of domestication. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have domesticated international disasters in 2011. As the study shows, rendering distant suffering more relevant to local audiences can be realized in several ways. A critical discourse analysis identified four key discursive modes of domestication. By drawing on these modes, news journalists try to incite involvement in their representations of distant suffering, hence inviting the local audience to relate with the distant other. Domestication can lead to possible feelings of cosmopolitanism and identification, although dominant power relations of global inequality remain largely unchallenged.

Research on mediated suffering within social sciences: expert views on identifying a disciplinary home and research agenda

Abstract Drawing on elite interviews with twelve leading scholars, this study attempts to answer questions about the disciplinary home and scope of research on media and suffering by positioning it at the heart of social sciences and humanities as well as at the crossroads of different disciplines. This overall open view is reflected in discussions on the current and future scope of the research. Regarding future directions, empirical audience research is high on the academic agenda as are studies that look into the role of new media with regard to suffering. Other widely shared comments referred to a further opening up of the research in terms of methodological and disciplinary approaches.

Raising an alternative voice: assessing the role and value of the global alternative news agency inter press service

Abstract Inter Press Service (IPS) is widely considered to be distinctly different from the conventional news agency. Research on this alternative news agency has mainly focused on the IPS news to underwrite this statement, but much less attention has been paid to the broader production context. Drawing on the findings of twenty-six semi-structured in-depth interviews, this article explores the value and role of IPS in the digital news market of the 21st century as perceived by staff members, stakeholders and independent scholars. In general, interviewees argue that IPS and its news copy are a useful and necessary addition to mainstream news media, as well as a crucial source of information and a partner for the global civil society. However, the study also indicates that IPS will need to face a number of professional, organisational and financial challenges if the news agency aspires to continue its unique role of sensitising the public and bridging the information gap between North and South.

Reflections on Inter Press Service: Evaluating the importance of an alternative news voice

News agencies are generally considered to be key agents in the process of news selection and dissemination, with a dominant role for a few Western actors. By determining which global issues will be distributed, they hold the power to set the international agenda for public debate, to shape public attitudes towards global issues and to define the world in which citizens operate. Global news is accordingly framed by the prevailing social, political and economic orientation of the West (Giffard, 1998a). One frequently criticized outcome of this is the ‘inadequate, negative, and stereotypical portrayal of developing countries’ (Rampal, 2002: 111). In addition to the issue of representation, several scholars have been criticizing dominant Western news providers such as Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Press for reducing the range of news topics in their coverage and for nurturing a homogenized public discourse (Harrison, 2006: 92; Paterson, 2001: 84–9). A rich body of academic research has provided evidence for these and other imbalances and unequal power structures in international news reporting (cf. BoydBarrett, 2000; Thussu, 2000). Closely related to this strand of research and setting out from the premise that ‘an alternative to corporatized global communication is a moral imperative and a necessary democratic requirement’ (Thussu, 2000: 252), scholars have been exploring the value and role of alternative news voices such as Gemini (now part of an NGO), the Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP, now operating as the online NAM News Network), PANA (Press) and Inter Press Service (IPS). What these initiatives all have in common is: their goal to ensure a greater balance in international news flows; their objective to strive for realistic representations of developing countries; and their continuous struggle to survive due to a lack of sufficient funding (Boyd-Barrett and Thussu, 1992). In retrospect, none of these agencies really posed a serious COMMENTARY

Close, but not close enough? Audience’s reactions to domesticated distant suffering in international news coverage

Journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer to the audience and thus make them more relevant and appealing; however, knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions toward domesticated news is lacking. Central to this study is understanding how an audience makes use of domestication strategies in viewing and reacting to mediated distant suffering. Earlier text-based research has found several ways of domesticating distant suffering that can invite an audience to care. Building further on this media-centered study, 10 focus groups reveal a two-flow model of domestication, consisting of first-level domestication on the production side by journalists and second-level domestication, in which audience members themselves use strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering.

Beyond Afro-pessimism and -optimism? A critical discourse analysis of the representation of Africa by alternative news media

Abstract Regarding the representation of Africa in Western media, academic criticism often refers to the presence of Afro-pessimistic discourses, and more recently to a seemingly emerging Afro-optimistic discourse. However, a systematic study of Africa’s representation is still missing as most research only includes mainstream media, news genres and formats and thus cannot provide the basis for any generalisable conclusions. To address this, we explore the representation of Africa in MO* Magazine, a Belgian alternative news magazine that focuses on the Global South, including an extensive coverage of Africa. Applying critical discourse analysis, we examined all articles covering Africa in 2015 and 2016 in addition to in-depth interviews with editorial staff. The study investigates how MO* constructs its alternative identity in the context of African news coverage. We argue that a mere empirical focus on features and narratives generally attributed to mainstream media, such as the presence of Afro-pessimistic and -optimistic discourses, is not sufficient to reach conclusions about the alternative identity of a magazine. The alternative value of MO* is reflected in the overall focus on the Global South and its key issues, the geographic diversity, editorial approach, and context-richness of the articles.