Global Trauma and the Cinematic Network Society

Understanding audience reception and interpretation of development communications: A research framework proposition

“…Predominantly employing visual, content and discourse analysis methodologies, these critical discussions reveal the different visual and textual modalities, explicit/implicit discourses, rhetorical strategies, ‘framing’ and conventions, employed by media and NGOs when communicating global poverty and inequality in the developing world (e.g., Lidchi, 1993; Brookes, 1995; Smith & Yanacopulos, 2004; Franks, 2005; Dogra, 2011, p. 12; Scott, 2009; Clark, 2009; Bhati & Eikenberry, 2015). Many have focused on discursive and semiotic constructions of sufferers in the context of their suffering (e.g., Dogra, 2011, 2012; Lissner, 1981); how development communications converge and coalesce with media narratives and products (e.g., Ponte & Richey, 2014; Richey & Ponte, 2008, 2011); film (e.g., Narine, 2010), and celebrity (e.g., Biccum, 2007; Brockington, 2009, 2014; Goodman & Barnes, 2011; Samman et al, 2009). A particularly valuable contribution that this scholarship makes is a critical attention to the patterns, trends, regimes of meanings, and in mapping representational practices within development communications of global poverty and inequality.…”

The Mediation of Humanitarianism: Toward a Research Framework

“…Employing critical discourse analysis and visual analysis, content analysis, thematic analysis, and framing analysis, studies in this strand investigate a variety of types of representations, mediated forms, and genres of distant suffering including news coverage of humanitarian disasters (e.g., Chouliaraki, ; Cottle, ; Franks, ; Gaddy & Tanjong, ; Hanusch, ; Moeller, , ; Pantti, Wahl‐Jorgensen, & Cottle, ; Robertson, ; Seaton, ; Tierney, Bevc, & Kuligowski, ), NGO appeals and campaigns (Chouliaraki, ; Nash, ; Vestergaard, ) and their interaction with media narratives and products (Nash, ; Richey & Ponte, ); celebrity (Chouliaraki, ; Driessens, Joye, & Biltereyst, ; Goodman & Barnes, ; Littler, ; Narine, ; Richey & Ponte, ); and films (Chouliaraki, ; Narine, ).…”

‘Intimacy at a distance’ in humanitarian communication

“…Scholarly critique needs to attend to the implications of the temporality of humanitarian communication, so centrally nourished by the imaginary of the humanitarian emergency (Calhoun, 2008a;Fassin, 2012). If one of the failures of contemporary humanitarian communication is that it privileges short-term, low-intensity relations with the suffering other (exemplified in the trend towards 'clicktivism'), over engagement in a deep, longterm relation grounded in ethical commitment to distant strangers (Chouliaraki, 2013;Narine, 2010;Orgad, 2012), then researchers and practitioners alike ought critically to consider the contribution of the temporal orientation of existing genres and forms of this communication to sustaining this failure. For example, are appeals -one of the most important genres of humanitarian communication that support and reinforce the emergency imaginary -suited to the 'burden' of cultivating a long-term 'journey' with audiences, sustaining their engagement with and commitment to the humanitarian cause?…”

“…If one of the failures of contemporary humanitarian communication is that it privileges short-term and lowintensity relations with the suffering other (exemplified in the trend towards 'clicktivism'), over engagement in a deep, long-term relation grounded in ethical commitment to distant strangers (Chouliaraki, 2012;Narine, 2010 (2008) and Cottle (2011) argue, humanitarian disasters need to be rethought as 'the dark side of globalization', and if it is their underlying human-made conditions and consequences rather than 'natural' unexpected features that need to be better communicated, then the current model of 'fleeting intimacy at a distance' (Author 1b removed) that governs NGO practice seems illequipped to deliver this change. Indeed, recent voices within the humanitarian sector (e.g.…”