In crisis management, risk management has been conceived mainly as a proactive pre-crisis management effort where it is deployed for crisis prevention and preparedness efforts. This chapter argues that risk management extends into the entire crisis management continuum, as crises ignite new types of risks with their associated stakeholders. Organizations should continually identify, manage and communicate risks to key stakeholders during the different phases of crisis management. A stakeholder orientation demands that organizations seek and involve risk stakeholders in the risk management process. The level of involvement will depend on both the identified risks and how stakeholders are expected to be affected by the proposed solutions and decisionmaking processes.

This article examines the problematic associated with the coverage of the Zimbabwean crisis in the Norwegian mainstream media. It examines the underlying messages and assesses whether the Norwegian media have an unconscious social, cultural or political bias, as manifested through the selection of sources, angling and in the narrative devices of frames used in the stories. The conclusions from the analysis are that the Norwegian media reduced the complex Zimbabwean issue into a 'typical' African story of tragedy and despair. This conclusion is microcosmic of the 'stereotyped frames' associated with the Western media and their tendency to portray the African continent as an unrelenting series of disasters. IntroductionAfrican countries are generally given scanty coverage in the daily news of the mainstream Western media, except when there is a big event going on, a pending catastrophe, or disaster. of readers daily. In order to examine the articles in these newspapers, I used a critical discourse analysis approach, a particular type of qualitative methodology that tries to understand the processes whereby reality comes into being (Phillips and Hardy 2002). Discourse analysis has proven to have a particular relevance for media studies as it offers insights into the way in which newspaper articles become meaningful to their readers by examining the textual patterns that serve as the vehicle for communication (Jensen 1987). While discourse analysis may be concerned with various aspects of language use, such as syntax or semantics, this paper is concerned with language use in social contexts, whereby discourses are assumed to be functional with respect to various aspects of the social context. This approach assumes that language does not reveal or reflect a pre-existing reality, but rather, constitutes it. The production and meanings of media texts are understood as reflections on the characteristics and orientation of the writer (Dijk 1983). Several works in media studies have shown that news production is part of complex professional routines for the management of possible sources, the interaction among journalists, and the possible 'formulations' of reality (ibid.). News text should thus be seen as manifestations of this journalistic process. Through discourse analysis of articles, I sought to examine how the Zimbabwean crisis is represented and interpreted, who are the main sources used or referred to, what is the orientation of these sources, are they primary or secondary sources. At the end, the paper assesses whether the Norwegian media have an unconscious social, cultural, or political biases, as manifested in the narrative devices or frames used in stories. It asks whether the coverage provided any meaningful insights into the political and historical forces in Zimbabwe and their geopolitical consequences. Representations and the reflection of realityAnalysing media coverage of Africa in the Western media, involves many of the same issues -the concepts of framing and representation. Framing is the ma...

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